on time

Blog Post 8.

This may not make any sense…

My fundamental understanding of time is slowly (and quickly and all at once and not at all) loosening it’s grip on me.

In my little, windowless room lives a clock. It occupies a space on the shelf and it ticks the seconds into the past very loudly. All over the world, time is being marked off in the same manner, at (almost exactly) the same intervals, by similar apparatuses. An hour in the morning has the same value on a clock as an hour in the evening or an hour spent eating a meal or reading a novel. It’s what we’ve been taught. It’s why we keep clocks running.

I’m beginning to mistrust the clock in my room. Spain has provided little evidence that I should trust the clock in my room. Here, time expands and contracts more than any space-time situation I have ever experienced. It disregards the rate of acceleration of one object relative to another object. It disregards the angle at which the sun’s photons hit the earth. It practically ceases to exist whenever food and friends come together. It is neither obligatory nor optional. It is a mere thing that exists in the background to ensure that the plane you are about to get on is the plane you purchased tickets for. It is a label for abstractions out of necessity, not a constant and regulatory fourth dimension.

I have no specific examples to share with you. Time is just losing its ability to act on things here. It’s like this: If I were to pick the clock up off the shelf and hold it upside-down, it would still tick at the same rate, but meaninglessly. Quite frankly, I haven’t even checked to see of the hands are pointing at the right numbers. It’s there, behind me, ticking away and I won’t check the hands because that, too is meaningless. Time still holds a soft influence on life here, of course.

This is all something that I will have to think about. Really spend some time pondering. I may be speaking prematurely, so I’ll update you if these ideas grow or clarify themselves as we enter the space in time beyond the universe as we know it.

Every evening I can, I run to the beach and wave goodbye to another day abroad. Have I been here awhile? Will these new shoes last long? Has anything changed? The clock keeps ticking and I still have no answers.

Perhaps I have them all.