TIME LAPSE

Unproven: In the beginning there was no time, no end.

But also not disproven, as of yet.

The big red button: It might (deliberately or not) get pushed.Then we get WWIV. But for now we have WWIII. In which the enemy has deployed from one airport to another, flights lasting just hours, while its virus requires days to incubate, hiding like a terrorist in a sleeper cell, landing before it's detected, too late. It doesn't take long to hijack existing fleets of aircraft connecting places all over the world. An effective defense is delayed while it spreads. It has one goal, to thrive and replicate; one strategy, exponential growth. The speed of air travel is an aid to its mobilization.

World leaders (dear or dastardly) have been blind sided. But none are safe from an enemy that effectively ignores them.

I dangle my feet over the edge while the clock people furl their dreams. I won't be stacking stones here. Getting the amazement to stand stock still won't stop the world. Toes can wiggle just so far, and then there is the abyss.

Doing a tap dance on a box is a done deal, and then the bottom falls out, way down beneath. There is no end to the echo rattling over dry creek stones. Certainly no trip on a New York subway, and neither a subway sandwich, beyond mustard. Far beyond muster. Down there a glimmer at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a mirage, skipping stones over a peak wave, shedding bits of civilization, listening intently for the silence of eternity. And not about what might come through your emergency radio, sitting up there, just in case, on the window sill. Even if it turned itself on, birds wouldn't pay any attention.

Nothing is under the dangling toes. Bees in this vast area of everywhere have become friends precisely because of this. Here in the backyard, anyone peeking over the fence, assuming properties as usually seen, would miss the space unfurled in any dimension. The impossible description would be distilled by a drop of raspberry juice flung into a puddle of water. As one ponders, the puddle shimmers and shimmies like my sister Kate. Bees that I know don't count flowers, just knowing where they are without any help from me, which is how we become friends.

Well then, do plants know time? Let us investigate.

Trees drop leaves in the winter, grow new ones in spring. They incorporate the rhythm of our orbit around the sun, living in harmony with its life giving energy. Given this, along with food and water, they reproduce endlessly. Remove any essential nutrient, nullify necessary conditions, and the cycle of generations ceases. Nutrients are recycled, perhaps used by other plants, and their bodies are a record of cycles of growth.

Humans consult the historical record. What kind of weather did the tree experience? The evidence of yearly growth implies some framework for events recorded in a putative temporal sequence. Across the seasonal bands, units of time are easily imagined in a line with its end points in the birth and death of the tree.

For the tree, no idea of its history or duration is necessary.

For humans a framework of events, called time, seems necessary and is created to relate events to each other. Time, thus conceived, becomes a source of entertainment in its own right; puzzles and speculation on the mystery of its origin. Devices have been invented to compare the cyclic nature of events with each other, resulting in measurements that can be recorded, just like the tree rings. Measurements have become a field of investigation that proceeds on its own, without reference to its physical origins. How small is a tree ring? How small can small get? choosing ever shrinking distances, probing towards a theoretical minimum of the smallest point, when it unexpectedly leaps beyond theoretical boundaries to become a singularity in which “time” loses meaning.

Taking this further, since “time” lost meaning in its usual visual metaphor, why not transpose it, for a last bit of entertainment, in an aural mode. Imagine a tone of increasing frequency that exceeds the limits of perception, passing into the realm of silence, demonstrating a certain absurdity.