Time Travellers

We are all of us travelling through time. Generally, we're doing it in an orderly, forward fashion, although some folks manage to go backwards on occasion.

Waking from a long coma must feel like having jumped through a time portal. How strange to wake up and find everything different, including one's body, when one's mind is still stuck in a time long past.

It's a human construct, this "time" thing. I don't much like it.

Then there's this clock thing, this daylight savings thing.

I never have gotten it, not really. Oh, I understand the history of it, have heard the reasoning behind it, but...nope, don't get it. If people are so concerned about using daylight, then why can't we just adjust schedules instead of mucking with clocks? Don't want to miss out on afternoon daylight? Instead of working from 8 - 5, work from 6 - 3. Whadaya mean that's not practical? And changing clocks will-he-nill-he, is?

Tell the sun what time he's rising and see if he complies. Tell the moon when she may sail through the stars and hold your breath until she minds you. You look good in blue.

Babies don't know about time in the same way we do. Babies and animals have "now". There is no tomorrow, and yesterday is some kind of hazy memory that isn't the present.

I like the book Einstein's Dreams. It's a lovely little fictional exploration of time. My favorite piece is about how there are two ways to live in time - one may abide by the clock, each day regimented into hours, each hours with its appointed purpose, or one may wake when one wakes, eat when one is hungry, love when one loves, sleep when one is tired, abiding by the more fluid time of one's own rhythm. It postulates that the two cannot ever really meet - I disagree a little, because I try to live a timeless life but I have clocks and calendars to help me when I must take part in this odd fracturing of the day called "hours" and "minutes".

We took a little jump in time this morning, didn't we? Setting clocks back, we got an hour to re-live. Here at Casa de Crazy, we set the clocks before bed (because who wants to get up at two in the morning, bleary-eyed, to set a bunch of clocks, all of which have different means of setting?), so our "gained" hour was used for sleeping.

What if we could bank this "savings"? What if we could deposit it, earn interest on it maybe, spend it when we wanted. How much would you save? What would you spend it on? Would you use it in minutes here and there, stretch out a deadline maybe, or a special moment? Or a big chunk, a sort of vacation or addition to the end times? Could you borrow against it in some way, maybe make mid-life longer so you can enjoy it more?

Could you bank more, maybe take time away from unpleasant things like illness, sorrow, or incarceration, and shorten that experience, add the time to happier things?

Often, when people ask me if there's anything I need, I answer "a winning lottery ticket", but sometimes I say "more time".

How curious it would be if we could reach in out pockets, fish out a few spare minutes or seconds, and drop them in the hat of the man on the street corner who is staring at his end and hoping to stave it off a little longer.

So tell me - how do you feel about this DST thing, and time in general?