A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

Oh, damn! That title is already taken. OK, I cannot compete with Dr. Hawking, nor do I wish to. My approach is less knowledgeable, less scientific than his. Mine is primarily experiential.

First, if I'm to talk about time, a definition might be helpful.

From an online dictionary:

TIME:
1. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

2. An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war; passed the time reading.

3. A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes.

4. A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 a.m.

5. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time.

Is that helpful?

I thought not.

When I was a kid, I used to lie awake at night speculating on what time was. Dad said that would drive me bonkers, no one understands time. He might have been right. I read H. G. Wells science fiction classic, The Time Machine. (As an aside, that opened a lifetime love of the science fiction genre) He called time a dimension


OK, definition time again.

DIMENSION:

1. A measure of spatial extent, especially width, height, or length.

2. Mathematics The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.

3. The range of such a coordinate.

4. Physics A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time.

I think the one from physics is most operative here. Now I am in deep waters. You know much more about physics than I do, so please just humour me, dear friend.

After reading The Time Machine, I started picturing time as a line, a number line. Could it possibly gain another dimension and curve on itself, with the intersecting points making present and future, or present and past into a single point? Does it maker any sense at all to reference time in terms of spatial dimension. Or is this a gross misuse of the venerable number line?

Somewhere along the line, I came to think of time as having three dimensions, past, present and future. This set the stage for what I experienced in an altered state of consciousness, which I will refer to as a Spiritual Experience (SE) for lack of a better term

Now, back to the mundane. Look at some object that has three spatial dimensions, say your dominant hand. It occurs to me that I don't know if you are right-handed or left-handed, so I'll picture both below. When you look at, you see those dimension, length, width and depth, but you do not - cannot! - see them as three separate properties, you see them as one organic whole, the length, width and depth each distinct and yet inseparable. Are you following me so far? Of course you are, we haven't gotten to the difficult part.

Now we get to the difficult part.

You most likely see your hand in only one dimension of time, the present. Now you need to use your imagination. Imagine looking at your hand and seeing it as it was when you were a foetus, a baby, a child, a teenager. Now, return to the present and, in your imagination, travel in the opposite direction, see your hand in ten years, then as an old person. If you have the nerve, see it as dead and decaying.

If you are following me now, we can move on to the really hard part.

Imagine seeing those three dimensions of time as an organic whole, each distinct and yet inseparable, past, present and future all existing together, so when you look at your hand, you are not seeing our usual three dimensional hand, but rather you are seeing a six dimensional hand.

Now imagine seeing the entire spacetime continuum in that way. That is my view of maya (the spacetime continuum) - when I am aware of maya at all - during a SE.

I am aware that this must sound science fiction, and I suppose it is. It is also something I have experienced and continue to experience occasionally.

And that is my explanation of the three dimensions of time, as best I can give it right now.

Now as I don't want to disappoint, here are parts of my three favourite time
songs, with links to the complete songs.

A Hazy Shade of Winter: (edited)
Simon and Garfunkel


Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life

But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Look around, leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground...

TIME IS ON MY SIDE: (edited)

The Rolling Stones
(Meade)

Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

You're searching for good times
But just wait and see
You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)
You'll come running back (spend the rest of my life with you, baby)
You'll come running back to me

Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
I said, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side
Yeah, time, time, time is on my side

Time In A Bottle: (edited)
Jim Croce


If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that Id like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
Id save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with

Barack's Impossible(?) Dream

This post is totally partisan. I like Barack Obama, both as a politician and as a human being. I have, in the course of this campaign, come to dislike John McCain more and more, both as a politician and a human being.

This article made me laugh. I hope in two weeks and one day, at this time, I am still laughing.

OK, OK, I admit this picture is over-the-top and crudely, inexpertly done, but why not? I'm over-the-top and crudely, inexpertly done (My Bad! Don't blame God!) By the way, "The Impossible Dream" is one of four songs I sing every morning after my morning prayers, to prepare me for how I want to live that day. (I'll tell you the others, if anyone asks.) And I've put the words of "The Impossible Dream," as well as some more of my ramblings at the end of this post.

Obama Belongs to All of Us
By Melvin Durai

I have a message for my African-American friends: Stop claiming Barack Obama as one of yours. He's not one of yours. He's one of OURS. In case you haven't checked, Obama isn't just black. He's half-black, half-white and half-Asian. Okay, perhaps he isn't half-Asian, but his step-father was Indonesian, he was raised partly in Indonesia, and most of his clothes are from Asia. So don't you dare laugh when you're driving through Chinatown and see a bumper sticker that says "I'm Voting For Obama. He's Almost Asian!"

If you're Hispanic, you can take pride in him too. Did you know that Obama loves tortilla chips and salsa, and he once sat through an entire Jennifer Lopez movie? Yes, the man has gone to great pains to discover his Hispanic side.

When they make a movie about Obama, you'll see him flying to the White House in a cape, with people gazing up and gasping, "It's a black man! It's a white man! It's everyman!"

Obama identified himself with the African-American community as a young man, partly because he felt a need to belong, and that suits everyone just fine, because we love to put people into neat categories. But his background is quite different from most African-Americans. After all, there aren't many African- Americans who could organize a family reunion and harbor a slight fear that Dick Cheney might show up.

And there aren't many African-Americans who could fly to Africa, host a dinner party for their extended family and have hundreds of people showing up, most of whom are actually related to them.

Obama's late father was Kenyan and his late mother was Kansan. If he's elected to the White House, it will be a momentous, historic occasion, because, as everyone knows, America has never had a Kenyan-Kansan president. Yes, he'll be America's very first K-K president, much to the dismay of the KKK.

Obama has given credit to his white mother for raising him after his father left, writing in his memoir that "what is best in me I owe to her." But despite all that, it's his father's race that seems to define him. "If you have one drop of black blood, you're black," society seems to say. But what if every drop of your blood is red?

Shouldn't we celebrate Obama's mixed heritage, instead of glossing over it, instead of cutting off his mother's side?

The same can be asked about Tiger Woods. Journalists often refer to Tiger as an African-American golfer, except in Thailand, where journalists describe him as "the golfer whose mother is Thai."

According to Wikipedia, Tiger's late father, Earl, was half African-American, one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Native American, while his mother, Kultida, is half Thai, one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Dutch. That makes Tiger one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African-American, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch. And that makes me glad I studied fractions in high school.

Thanks to those lessons, I've figured out that Tiger is -- drum roll please! -- twice as much Asian as African-American. But not many people know that. If they made a movie about him, it would be called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Asian."

Tiger, quite smartly, considers himself "Cablinasian" (a combination of Caucasian, Black, American-Indian and Asian.) He's not just a great golfer, but also a great role model, making so many people proud, especially those in the Cablinasian community. You may not know this, but for 10 consecutive years, they've selected him as "Cablinasian of the Year."

Tiger has a unique genetic makeup -- and so does each of us, no matter our racial background. Obama owes his not just to his father, but also his mother. That's why it puzzles me that 92 percent of blacks supported him in the Mississippi primary, but only 26 percent of whites did.

Why such a racial divide over a candidate who's half-this and half-that?



March 24, 2008

Melvin Durai is a Toronto-based writer and humorist. Born in India, he grew up in Zambia and has lived in North America since the early 1980s.His humor has appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines in several countries, including America, India and Zambia. Read more of Melvin Durai's humor at http://melvindurai.com

The Impossible Dream
from MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972)
music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man fat, little gramma, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

I admit, Don Quixote de la Mancha (Please do check out this site. The webmaster and I have religious differences, but share a common spirit).

is one of my heroes. I flat refuse to give in or give up. Am I a romantic dreamer? Sure. Why not? "And I'm not the only one." A few more of us and who knows what wonderful things could happen? I ask myself, "What will it take to break me?" Honestly, I don't know. I don't think I want to find out. Loss couldn't do it. Death couldn't do it.

Although Nietzsche isn't one of my favourite people, he did say something true. "What does not destroy me makes me stronger." It is dangerous to almost destroy a human being, because that person is likely to "come back even stronger, not a novice any longer."

Now my next step is to deflate this gigantic ego-thing. I read somewhere that the biggest ego trip is believing that you have no ego; the second biggest is believing you have your ego under control.