30 October 2017

The oddities of Time

It feels odd to me, to put it in mildly, when I stand outside of myself sometimes and see the passage of time. Sometimes across more than three decades or across the years which have now officially become more than a decade but even across weeks. I remember writing a bit on the oddities of time from 14 years ago (2003) about a memory from a year before that (2002)…and a general musing on my perception of time:

It’s (time for) take-off: The seven hours have gone by in a snap. Just like seven years or seven minutes. Time seems to be such an amusing concept. I’m ‘gaining’ a day while travelling to the other side of the planet. That feels like such a cheeky thing to be doing — almost against the rules. While I’m doing up my seat belt, I can’t help but gurgle at that thought. I’m constantly calculating the time back on the part of the globe that I left early in the morning. An adorable baby boy is standing up in his seat and looking at me. I feel an irresistible urge to cuddle him. But it’s time for the most magnificent of moments — the glorious take-off. Later on in the flight the baby boy Ian, pulls off the blanket from my eyes and says, “Peek-a-boo.” He then proceeds to make some toast for me in his (imaginary) ‘oven’ while carrying on a conversation with me. I stare at him with bright, bright eyes while I take a slice of his ‘just-perfect-toast’…
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Time warps ever so frequently for me. It (almost?) never travels in a linear motion. Sometimes it collapses and I can’t differentiate between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’; the past, present and future, the before and the after get sadly jumbled up in my head; sometimes it balloons up into a rising mist, floating, hanging overhead —not letting go; sometimes I’m stuck in a time dimension while the world moves along at its normal pace; sometimes I’m granted a sneak preview of the what-is-to-be and then I’m sent shooting back into the past (or should that be the present?) Sometimes time seems to be nothing but a capsule; a reservoir of memories. Does it seem this way to me because I’m mad or merely absent minded? Or is it because time is truly relative and everything is happening right now and there’s only an artificial separation, an illusory slower-ing down of vibrations so that we can live through experiences ‘in time’? Maybe then the sense of déjà vu that hits us is not about the ‘already seen’ but about the ‘being seen’ and the ‘being experienced’ – very much like the sneak previews…but (happening) at the same time in a parallel universe? Maybe my Fimh comes from some place that’s located near the mysterious zone of ‘time warps’. It’s confusing at moments and unsettling. There’s a sensation of inexpressible disorientation, similar to the experience of living through a gripping film in a darkened movie hall and then walking out into the bright sunlight. A part of the self is still locked in the movie or somewhere in between — and there’s a fragmented sense of reality. I’ve been through reality warps of different orders, different intensities; some just mildly confusing like the time warp, some distinctly more aggravating (and some distinctly, if even strangely, wondrous)…

Time takes its own time and works according to its own whimsy – I am almost completely convinced of this. There is nothing absolute and fixed about the passage of time. It works according to its own fancies and feelings. Clock-time says not much about the feelings on the passage of time and those human feelings – I have been thinking more and more, and quite in contrast to what I used to think as a teen are not matters that can be or even should be entirely snuffed out by reason and rationality and logic – although these latter matters are all good and important and useful aspects. Maybe recent conversations, the different blogposts, chapters and rather odd books that I’ve been reading and re-visiting and my general state of being and whatever it is that I am doing have some hand in this. I remember having pooh-poohed the arena of ‘Sociology of Emotions’ when it had become a rather hot and also contentious topic – and yet, now I find myself reconsidering my earlier presumptuousness. But this post is about time and its oddities – not about emotions. About emotions, intentions and motivations – maybe, I’ll write on another day.

The week that went by seemed to take its own sweet time in going by – if even some random passer-by had told me casually that two and a half weeks had passed by since the previous Saturday – I would have merely nodded my head and gone back to editing or re-writing a piece of work or worrying or wondering or missing or maybe walking. And yet if I consider the four whole glorious days just before that – during Diwali and my best friend’s birthday – it seems time just decided to whizz by as though it were a flash of light.

I remember I was looking at and listening to the rain one morning, feeling the huge gusts of wind, and shivering every once in a while while sitting out on the verandah and watching a lazy dog and reading a rather weird (interestingly weird in parts but not as a whole) book on meditation, consciousness and psychology (Sam Harris ‘Waking Up’), and knowing someone was snoozing and there I was feeling an indescribable feeling of childish delight and quiet bliss. I remember walks and conversations, scoldings and tremblings, incomprehension and perfect conversations, mushrooming questions which never quite get answers, stories, and boisterous celebrations with fire crackers and lights and colours and talks and quietness and laughter and togetherness. I have no pictures or recordings to show myself that all of it really happened out-there and not just in my loony head. But I find myself thinking that maybe time while being a silent and wicked thief exists for many reasons but also so that we can separate events as they happen, cherish some memories in retrospect and remember what and whom we remember and choose to remember and why?