Time is the ultimate mystery that I can never get my head
around although it’s been a fascination as long as I can remember. Time goes by
but then sometimes it goes by again. We swim in it unconsciously like fish in
water and yet it is beyond understanding. Today is a soft, mellow sunny day but
it brings many other times together like a double exposure. Standing outside
I’m feeling sure that a particular late nineteenth century August day was just
like this one. Hollyhocks, thick grass, a wooden fence and the soothing shade
of a particular large Cottonwood. The sky is clear intense blue with no smoke
or haze. I actually hear the sound of some very old motor car mixed with bird
chirps from the willow next door. But, I was not alive then. It was my
grandmother’s youth. The cats are following me around the yard. This is also brings
in an old memory even though the cats are young, and one was born only a year
ago.
Next, I step into the living room through the door we leave open
all summer and now I am at a house in Denver. It was a house I loved in an old
neighborhood I loved and has special memories although some of them are
traumatic and life altering. The neighborhood was both old and young. Old
houses, streets lined with old trees but with lots of appeal to young people
who liked the ambiance along with nearness of coffee shops, bookstores,
restaurants and markets. Now that I’m flipping through layers, I land next in my
childhood home around my eighteenth year. I’m reading Kierkegaard under our Transparent
apple tree (the name of the variety not it’s condition, it was wonderfully tart
and sweet for pie) while managing the irrigation water as it flows down rows of
strawberry plants. I’m barefooted, with long dark hair and this is the only
place in the world that feels in balance.
Joker, our black Lab, my only company is snoozing in the shade nearby.
I’ve always been able to time travel. Nevertheless, it
doesn’t feel like I’m going anywhere. It’s much like a dream that can fade in
and out. Another way of describing it is
layers of various densities. Sometimes I wonder if time isn’t an accumulation
of layered worlds that can be selectively uncovered like sheets of paper. My
current body or at least the one that is writing this has more or less attached
to one of these layers, supposedly the top layer but now and then, other layers
bleed through. The mystery is why a particular time chooses to bleed through
what can only be an endless stack of possibilities. Who is it that seeks a
particular time/place. The database is beyond imagining and how is a particular
file retrieved from eternity?
Painting is another field of strange time. When I finish a
painting, it seems to have a life of its own and not only that it seems as if
it has always existed. I mention this because supposedly a painting is the
creation of the mind and hands. However, a living being such as a child or even
a pet also has this quality of always having existed and this has nothing to do
with being able to remember a time before their emergence into the present world.
This is part of the fascination of living in anticipation of one day after
another even if the order of days sometimes becomes scrambled.
The time issue and its limitations predictably bring up the
topic of reincarnation. Could it be that our other selves actually exist on
multiple dimensions that we conveniently explain by the time concept? I notice
that the older I become the more translucent layers of time seem. Old people
notoriously merge the past with the present and for that reason are often accused
of losing their grip on reality. Very young children also don’t process time
the way adults do. Could it be that the view of the greater encompassing
reality is actually more realistic on the outer edges of a lifetime? Imagine a huge
river. You can see both shore and water on each side but in the middle there is
only water. Could time existence be something like this? Perhaps, those in the
middle of the journey have lost their memory of where water joins land.
In recent months, I’ve noticed that I have to be very careful
about visualizing a thing or situation. It often actualizes very quickly. Some
of the big things probably hit obstructions and ricochet but small things
happen quickly and laughably. I was reminded of this again yesterday. On the
way home from the post office I said to PQ, “would you like a McDonald’s ice
cream?” He said, “sure,” and then added
that today maybe a strawberry smoothie would be even better. This inspired my
own fleeting vision of a chocolate dipped cone but I quickly nixed it. When we arrived, I told the order taker to
give us a small strawberry smoothie and a small vanilla cone. When we picked our order up it was the
strawberry smoothie and a large chocolate dipped cone.
 |
| George at rest. |
A more extreme example is George, the young
cat that recently adopted us to mixed reviews from Shadow, last year’s feline
addition. I remember browsing through cat websites after losing Joe and Missy. Then
I got adventurous and visited hybrid cat websites. I wondered what it would be
like to have an Ocicat, Savannah, Bengal (not the tiger), or Chausie but they are very expensive and after doing
some research learned that ownership can be challenging. After living with George
(previously called squeaky because of his odd chirp), I’ve come to the
conclusion that he is a hybrid that someone found to be too much cat. I’ve
since learned that this happens all too often with hybrids and they are
abandoned to add their genes to the feral cat population. He is extremely smart, highly charged,
demanding, likes to play with water and is quite affectionate although pushy and
boisterous. After taking note of his lanky body, big feet, slightly striped
ears and longer hind legs it suddenly dawned on me that I had just manifested
another fantasy. Perhaps the borders between time/space dimensions really are thinning.
Hopefully, there won’t be too many more surprising
results.
