Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Life in Motion


...the time change confused me, as usual...spring forward, fall back seems simple enough, but somehow always so complicated...particularly considering the tendency of some, but not all, high tech appliances these days to update on their own...I quit wearing a watch long ago, and, more recently, my old clock radio broke...(actually, it still works, but the knob used to change the time on it doesn’t)...(so, I just need to turn it on at exactly midnight)...(which I’m gonna do...one of these days)...

...(that plan, however, is complicated by my recent efforts to get up earlier)...(while also cutting down on junk food and caffeine)...(which makes the early to bed part easier)...(but also leaves me kinda wandering in a dream)...(like, even more than usual)...(weeks going by like long, highly involved years)...(not that that's a bad thing)...

...have been going to the local meditation studio where people sit, generally, a bit too early for me...or, sometimes, more than a bit...and this is where the time change became an issue...waking up this past Sunday, saw my cell phone and computer both had the same time....so...did that mean they both changed automatically, or neither did?....as I was up, anyway, assumed the former and, since I was too late to walk, headed out to the car, hoping I wouldn’t be an hour early...to find that the car clock was an hour ahead...its wrongness letting me know what time was right...relatively speaking...

...watching Koyaanisqatsi...(wonder what the spell-check's gonna think of that one)...(Hopi for "life out of balance")...Godfrey Reggio’s masterwork of ecological chaos, fancy camerawork and Philip Glass minimalism.....first time I saw it was with a buncha people from the Philly Greenpeace office in the mid-80’s...passed around an eye-dropper, watched it along with The Lorax...("I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues")...and Star Trek IV...(the one where the Starship Enterprise goes back in time to saves the whales)...on somebody’s VCR...kind of a serendipitous psychedelic eco-film festival....certainly, never saw a mushroom cloud quite the same way again...

...time slowing up and speeding down...Hopi prophecies meeting momentous ill-conceived housing developments...embedded in the inherent contradictions of so beautifully using cutting edge technology to make a statement about technology growing out of control...dazzling unspoiled spaces and toxic wastelands...

...there in the midst, though, a kind of third term represented by moving images of people on the street...faces, hair, clothing...caught up in the maelstrom and looking very strange...and yet, they’re us...

10 comments:

Bob Weisenberg said...

I'm having the opposite sensation of time recently--that of time speeding up to the extent that whole years rush by and here I am suddenly several years later, which creates the feeling of kind of rushing toward the end, but thanks to all that Yoga spirituality death doesn't seem as bad as it used to seem, and time speeding up certainly makes each moment seem more easily precious.

Bob W.

Laura said...

whoah!!! reading your post is like a psychedelic trip through the time-space-continuum and I can't spell that word either but also remember watching it with friends back in the 80's...the movie with the relentless Philip Glass minimalistic master piece...yeah.

Ps...send me an email about what you are grateful for...for the big TG Word quilt!!!

Melinda said...

Time in motion, indeed. I feel that time is slipping away so fast, I need to run like hell to catch up. I'm in 'spin mode' these days, trying to catch up on everything I left behind while I was on my last vacation while still needing to prepare for the 'dream vacay' in Egypt/Italy.

I hate the time change. I wish they'd just keep it one way or another. No matter which way it goes (forward or back), it messes up my internal clock and throws me into a state of discombobulation (great word!) every time!

Take care, Jay!

Melinda

Bob Weisenberg said...

Melinda. So good to see someone use that wonderful, uncommon, almost onomonopia-ic (how do you spell that one, Dr. Jay?) word "discombobulated". It was one of my mom's favorites (she passed away in 1993), although she always used it as a verb. I tried not to take it personally when she said she was "discomBOBulated".

Bob W.

Meredith LeBlanc said...

One of the best things about the years I lived in Las Vegas was that there very few clocks anywhere. Of course they wanted you to lose track of time to gamble and spend more, but really it was nice to not have a clock in your face constantly. Once I started carrying a cell phone around all of the time I stopped wearing a watch, it was very freeing.

As I grow into my 40's I've created an intention of allowing time to do what it will. I walk more, I drive my fast car at a leisurely pace, and I attempt to relax more fully.

As for discombobulated - one of my faves. My Mom says discomboobulated Bob.

Lana Gramlich said...

I still say we should have fallen back 1/2 hour & then leave the clocks alone forever! There's no need for this flip flopping every year.

Lydia said...

Because time is going by in a blip for me, and I am depressed by that fact, this line caught my attention:
(weeks going by like long, highly involved years)...(not that that's a bad thing).... I really must (after talking and writing about it) give a good go at trying to get up earlier.

This post was one of the best pieces of writing I've ever seen on time.

Daisy Deadhead said...

I despise the time-change. My father was from Indiana, where there is famously NO time change... he said Indiana "was run on God's time."

Koyaanisqatsi = knew a guy who used this as his online name... nobody could spell it, so we all called him Koy. :)

Melissa said...

Time is a man-made construct that I choose to ignore. Unfortunately, my boss follows this construct quite diligently. I follow it just to appease her.

earthtoholly said...

Awww, is that you, Fargo? Lucy's pretty sure it is, 'cause she recognized your doggie scent from your last appearance here...and that girl knows her doggie scents.

Unfortunately, drjay, I don't need the "fall back" to screw me up. I once showed up at work an hour early, and it was Twilight Zone strange...different faces on the bus...streets more quiet than usual. All became apparent when the person I worked for came out of his office and asked what I was doing there so early. I don't remember how that happened, but that's a mistake I didn't make again.