Sunday, March 30, 2014

Time is Occasional

The nature of time, contrary to popular opinion, is not a simple linear progression.  It wobbles, it curves and sometimes seems to absent itself completely.  On the occasions when it does deign to put in an appearance it seems distressingly uninterested in conforming to the categorisations we have helpfully provided for it.  Which means that time isn't just fickle but is an ungrateful little minx as well.  This is why an hour can sometimes drag for an eternity or flick past so quickly you could blink and miss it.

Sometimes I've noticed that time just seems to vanish.  I have it on reasonable authority that the last five years did happen but I'd be very hard pressed if I had to produce any solid proof that time had actually passed at all.  It has been pointed out to me that I simply wasn't paying attention which is probably true but doesn't alter my main point which is that time gets up to some deeply weird shit when it thinks nobody is looking.  There are some experiments where the mere act of observation alters the results.  Time seems to work the opposite way.  It only works if somebody is watching.

Personally I don't think time passes at all except under observation.  In my case, having realised I was watching, time hastily dumped five years worth of semi plausible memories into my head and pretended it had been happening all the time.  I'm pretty sure I don't remember doing half the things I remember doing.  This in itself isn't very impressive until you realise that time is doing the same thing for every single person in the world.

The question is, why?  Surely it would be easier to simply unfold in a basic linear progression rather than indulge in all this desperate backing and filling.  My opinion is that being time is simply something time does on a part time basis.  All the rest of the time time is doing something far more interesting with its time.  Every so often it checks in with the office, patches up any holes that have appeared in causality and then goes back to whatever else it was doing.  Which raises another question.  If time itself is a part time job why do I spend so much of my time at work?

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