#4 TATWTD “TIME”
#4 TATWTD January 2, 2019
TIME
Maybe Aristotle was right, that Time was a “calculable measure of motion with respect to before and afterness.” Fair enough.
What we call the “New Year,” sends my mind to the three large clocks found in our small apartment. Each, in its unique way, sounds seconds. And what is a “second” if not the “Time” elapsed “during 9,192,631,770 (9.192631770 x 10 9 ) cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium 133 atom”?
Well, actually, sometime before levels of cesium 133 atoms mattered, Babylonians and Egyptians did stuff with math and the numbers 12 and 60 and came up hours that easily enough got divided into minutes and seconds, creating the means to make sure you could be on time for your dental appointment or lunch with cranky Auntie Tillie.
But why? I wonder. Why does motion with respect to before and afterness matter so to those of us who carry phones with clocks, who hang or place clocks in nearly every room we occupy; why have we chosen an arbitrary date (which is a means of measuring before/afterness) to say, “Ah! A New year!” A new hour, a new minute, only a second ago. Or, it happened in a nano-second. Try Picosecond or Planck time in which we measure the motion of light.
Or, let’s go big Time: Consider the Supereon that we time-keepers divide into eons, and those into eras, and that into periods pregnant with epochs and, finally, ages. Caring about significant times, we attach such words as: Early, High, Late, Stone, Iron, Dark, Industrial, and even, Good and Bad.
Three significant large clocks occupy space in our small apartment. Each tolls time.
Today, I am trying to remember events that matter to me without stamping them with a date or an hour—without “before or afterness,” but it isn’t possible. The moments (oops, there it is) when I said a final goodbye to people I love; people whose lives are marked by time. The occasions of hilarious happenings, like the midnight (oops) when David and I woke to a large man opening the sliding door of our bedroom. A full moon behind him created a silhouette but not identity. Had guns been present in our home, our quietly sneaking in teenaged son might be dead. David leapt to struggle with the intruder who cried out, “It’s ME!” The two fell back to the bed where we all laughed off fear and danger.
What shall we do with this thing we have chosen to measure? How shall we use it, master it, give it rein, appreciate it, challenge it, rest in it, remember it? A New Year . . . in which to think of Time.
