Flashback Friday: Astonishing and Creative Ways of Marking or Keeping Time

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was 
A time of innocence, 
A time of confidences 
Long ago, it must be, 
I have a photograph 
Preserve your memories; 
They're all that's left you
--Bookends Theme, Paul Simon


Based on how often I've played it over the years, Tell Tale Signs must be one of my favorite Dylan albums. And one of my favorite songs on that double CD is Born In Time which I wrote about here in 2018:
"Born In Time" and Other Dylan Songs About Being Born

You can find the lyrics to "Born In Time" here.

Time is a concept that philosophers and thinking people have mulled over since the beginning time. Or at least since humans first appeared here. Poets and songwriters have been inspired by it, fascinated by the various ways we experience it, as too short, too long, too little and too much. 

Eve: Any idea what time it is?
Adam: Good question. Based on the angle of the sun I'd say it was after noon.

Or...

Gork: I killed another one of these things. After we skin it and build a fire it will be dinner time.
Glam: Oh good. I was getting tired of leftovers.

As life became more organized and sophisticated, so did our means of keeping time. When I took piano lessons as a boy I was given a metronome, which one can set to various speeds. It helps keep you from speeding up your pace when playing, something we often do when nervous.

If you go to see a live orchestra performance -- nowadays you can watch them on YouTube -- you'll notice how the conductor uses his baton to set the tempo.

During my years in advertising I wrote quite a few scripts for radio advertising. I would utilize an Online Stopwatch to time these scripts so that they fit the radio station's time constraints. Today, I use that same Online Stopwatch to time my speeches for Toastmasters.

Photo courtesy @aronvisuals on Unsplash

The film Back to the Future had much to do with time. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) figures out a solution to being stuck in the past when he realizes that the Hill Valley clock tower will be struck by lightning on a specific moment in time...

Back to the Future is just one of many films that had time travel as a central theme. Others include 12 Monkeys, the Terminator films and Peggy Sue Got Married.

When I was a little tyke we used to watch a cartoon called Mr. Peabody's Improbable History that was on the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. Mr. Peabody was the smartest being on earth and one of his inventions was the WABAC (Way-Back) machine. A central feature of the cartoon series was going back in time to teach Sherman about various people throughout history, from Napoleon and Lord Nelson to Jesse James and Sir Isaac Newton.

When I was in college I had a philosophy professor who introduced us to Husserl's On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time.  The book is a foundational phenomenological investigation into how we experience time not as objective clock-time, but as it appears within consciousness itself.

The central insight is that time-consciousness is not a mere succession of isolated “now” moments. Instead, every present moment of awareness has a thick, structured “living present” composed of three inseparable elements: primal impression (the immediate now), retention (the immediate just-past, which we still hold onto directly much like the eye briefly retains an after-image), and protention (the anticipation of the immediate future). Of this idea, much more could be said, if I had more time.

All these thoughts about time were stimulated by this fascinating web page titled Astonishing and Creative Ways of Marking Time, Keeping Time. I found it so interesting I wanted to. share it... and if you have time to explore, you will enjoy it, too.

Meantime, whatever is on your agenda for the weekend, have a good time. 

Originally published in May 2020 when many of us had a lot of time because of the lockdowns.

Throwback Thursday: Keep It Real

 BOOKS AND WRITING-RELATED 

LINK TO "KEEP IT REAL"

https://open.substack.com/pub/ennyman3/p/keep-it-real?r=1spv6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

It's one of those days

The River of Time: A Meditation on the Flow of Life

I had a new thought this weekend. It flowed out of a quote that went something like this: "The future is the past unfrozen."

As I reflected on this notion, however, I couldn't help but think about the behavior of water in its different states. I liked the idea that our past was frozen, and I thought about how water freezes below a specific temperature. But once it is unfrozen it can also be altered yet again when you boil it or heat it above 212 degrees F. It becomes an invisible gas at that point.

It's interesting that time therefore has three phases: past, present and future. Likewise water has three phases: solid, liquid and gas.

What we see when we apply this notion to time is that all of time is a unity, but it is experienced in different forms. Try as we might, we can't alter the past. Our achievements and mistakes leave a permanent record. They are frozen in time. Our present, on the other hand, is fluid. This fluid present is where we live and experience life. The future is invisible. It is so unformed it cannot be seen, like unpolluted air.

If the whole of time is one unit, then this would explain how God can be described as being the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and be both simultaneously. Some people see a fatalism inherent in God knowing the end from the beginning, but the paradox is this: the present is ever fluid until it is past. Because the present is fluid, anything is possible. It's up to us to decide "what next." Our decisions today will determine what will be frozen in time tomorrow.

* * * * 

Is it true that what will be will be? 

What will be is up to us. 

Is the future inevitable?

Yes, but only after it has been frozen in the past.

EdNote: Top right is a painting, acrylic on panel, 24"x 36". Bottom is AI generated variation

Originally published in September, 2016

Where Will You Be When Tomorrow Is Today?

I've often thought about the tripartite nature of time--past, present and future. I think it interesting that time going backwards is immense. Likewise, the future stretches forward to infinity... or so it seems. Where we live at this moment is in the now. 

How does that work? It's such a small space, yet we've never really lived anywhere else. Where I am now will quickly be past as I keep moving into the next now and the next...

Someone made a comment yesterday that led me to write down the words at the top of this page. "Where will you be when tomorrow is today?" I'm not sure that was the exact wording of what they said, but as I reflected on it those were the words I recorded. I was thinking it might make a good title or theme for a poem, or a song. 

Now here it is, yesterday's tomorrow is here now. I am captured today in this specific space in time. As a result of clocks--a man-made invention--I can even record the exact time of this now. Before clocks, time was measured by nature's actions. I will meet you at sunrise, or sunset. We'll go to the mountain together after the harvest. We'll gather at the Big Lake on the next Full Sturgeon Moon. (ricing season)

Where will you be when tomorrow is today?
If I met you there, what would you say?
It won't be for long but I'll be going away
to the land where the deer and antelope play.

Life is a gift. For most of us it is measured in years. 

There are many thoughtful songs about this matter of time. One of my favorites is "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?"  

And where does it go? 

Another thought here. You can't take it with you. Time is yours to spend as long as you are here. Therefore it is precious, not something to be squandered. 

Meantime... I hope the week ahead will be rewarding for you. 

Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

The opening track on side two of Judy Collins' Colors of the Day* is "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" Her delivery is heartfelt, poignant and moving. I've listened to it countless times over the years and it always soothes. The lyrics begin like this.

Across the morning sky, all the birds are leaving
How can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I do not count time
Who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Time is experienced in many ways. There are the seasons, and there are the days -- sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset. Sometimes, when you are longing for something, time drags. Other times it seems to fly. 

The birds, in tune with the seasons, depart for warmer climates each autumn. But the narrator accepts the winter, lost in a different kind of time... that is timeless.

Sad deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
Who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

The second verse addresses departure in a different manner. But our narrator is unconcerned, floating in that timeless sphere beyond it all. The reason is explained in verse three. She is not alone while her lover is near. And though disruptions occur, and he flies away, she knows that he will return, like the dawn, like the birds, like the ebb and flow of the sea. She's in that state of being where she's untouched, nourished by the painful sweetness of things we don't fully understand but accept. 

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time
Who knows how my love grows?
Who knows where the time goes?

The song speaks of mystery, of something ethereal, indefinable. Resignation? Acceptance? Perhaps it's simply that sense of being immersed in timelessness. 

Where is this timeless place? It's an interior spatial plane, a place we miss because of the blistering pace of most of our lives. We rush about from here to there, escaping from our selves. 

In Psalm 23 the psalmist writes, "He leads me beside still waters." Those "still waters" are within. If we would just be still we could be comforted and nourished by them. 

* * * 

Myintroduction to Javier Bardem came via the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men. His portrayal of Anton Chiguhr, the villain he brought to life on the silver screen, was more than memorable. It also won him a well-deserved Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. And it stirred a desire in me to see more of his films. (I have since seen many.)

One of these was The Dancer Upstairs, directed by John Malkovich. It's a powerful film on so many levels. The casting is perfect, especially the lead characters played by Bardem and Laura Morante. (You can read my review here.) 

In the final scene, post-climax, there's a subtle resolution that takes place. The scene is accompanied by a soundtrack featuring another version of "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?" except it's not by Judy Collins or Sandy Denny, the song's author. Rather, it is Nina Simone, and it's an absolutely wonderful rendition, beginning with a lengthy spoken introduction, both in this recording and also in the film. The purpose of this blog post was, in part, to share this song:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXeh742_jak

* Colors of the Day is actually a Best of Judy Collins album, so the song originally appeared earlier, on the flip side of her version of "Both Sides Now."

A Few Details I Didn't Know About Daylight Saving Time Trivia

Photo courtesy Jeepika. Creative Commons

All my life I've called it Daylight Savings Time. This weekend I learned that I was wrong. It's Daylight Saving Time.

As usual, finding myself getting corrected regarding something I've always taken for granted leads me to wonder what other misconceptions I continue to. hold. How about you?

Here are a few other facts about Daylight Saving Time of which you may or may not have been aware.

The  official "time adjustment" occurs each spring at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. "Spring Forward, Fall Back" is how we always remind ourselves which direction to turn our clocks. 

Some people attribute Daylight Saving Time to Ben Franklin who wrote a facetious satirical piece about the idea. According to the Wikipedia entry on Daylight Saving Time, however, it was a British-born New Zealand entomologist named George Hudson who came up with the idea in 1894. His paper proposing DST was submitted to the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1895. A follow up on this notion was submitted four years later. 

The idea gained traction after Englishman William Willett published a pamphlet in 1907 titled, "The Waste of Daylight." His original idea was a little more complicated than what we ultimately adopted. He suggested moving clocks forward in spring by 80 minutes over a period of four weeks in April, and then reversing them in September. 

Attempts were made in the British Parliament to make it into law but to no avail. During WWI Germany implemented a Daylight Saving Time concept in April 1916 and Britain did the same a little later that year, primarily to save coal. In other words, it was not something the country did to help farmers as many have sometimes surmised.

* * * 

Something else I learned this weekend: Hawaii and Arizona are contrarians on this matter, preferring not to spring forward and fall back each year.

* * *

For what it's worth, when I wrote about this in 2012 I got a few facts wrong, the most embarrassing being that "s" in Savings. Again, it's Daylight Saving Time.

Alas. There are still some things Mr. Know-It-All doesn't know. 

Happy Monday and enjoy your week.

Astonishing and Creative Ways of Marking Time, Keeping Time

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was 
A time of innocence, 
A time of confidences 
Long ago, it must be, 
I have a photograph 
Preserve your memories; 
They're all that's left you
--Bookend Theme, Paul Simon


Based on how often I've played it over the years, Tell Tale Signs must be one of my favorite Dylan albums. And one of my favorite songs on that double CD is Born In Time which I wrote about here in 2018:
Born In Time and Other Dylan Songs About Being Born

You can find the lyrics to Born In Time here.

Time is a concept that philosophers and thinking people have mulled over since the beginning time. Or at least since humans first appeared here. Poets and songwriters have be inspired by it, fascinated by the various ways we experience it, as too short, too long, too little and too much. 

Eve: Any idea what time it is?
Adam: Good question. Based on the angle of the sun I'd say it was after noon.

Or...

Gork: I killed another one of these things. After we skin it and build a fire it will be dinner time.
Glam: Oh good. I was getting tired of leftovers.

As life became more organized and sophisticated, so did our means of keeping time. When I took piano lessons as a boy I was given a metronome, which one can set to various speeds. It helps keep you from speeding up your pace when playing, something we can often do when nervous.

If you go to see a live orchestra performance -- nowadays you can watch them on YouTube -- you'll notice how the conductor uses his baton to set the tempo.

During my years in advertising I wrote quite a few scripts for radio advertising. I would utilize an Online Stopwatch to time these scripts so that they fit the radio station's time constraints. Today, I use that same Online Stopwatch to time my speeches for Toastmasters.

Photo courtesy @aronvisuals on Unsplash

The film Back to the Future had much to do with time. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) figures out a solution to being stuck in the past when he realizes that the Hill Valley clock tower will be struck by lightning on a specific moment in time...

Back to the Future is just one of many films that had time travel as a central theme. Other include 12 Monkeys, the Terminator films and Peggy Sue Got Married, among others.

When I was a little tyke we used to watch a cartoon called Mr. Peabody's Improbable History that was on the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. Mr. Peabody was the smartest being on earth and one of his inventions was the WABAC (Way-Back) machine. A central feature of the cartoon series was going back in time to teach Sherman about various people from history from Napoleon and Lord Nelson to Jesse James and Sir Isaac Newton.

All these thoughts about time were stimulated by this fascinating web page titled Astonishing and Creative Ways of Marking Time, Keeping Time. I found it so interesting I wanted to. share it... and if you have time to explore, you will enjoy it, too.

Meantime, whatever is on your agenda for the weekend, have a good time. 

Quarantines and Updike's Four Life Forces

Model of the Tabernacle in Imna Park, Israel

You must stay at the entrance to the tent of meeting day and night for seven days and do what the Lord requires, so you will not die; for that is what I have been commanded.”--Leviticus 8:35

I once wanted to write a one-act play about the above passage from Leviticus 8. It is one sentence long but my imagination entered into it because just as Aaron had four sons who had just been consecrated for the priesthood, so also my own parents had four boys. And when I saw how Aaron and his sons were to be quarantined for seven days at the entrance of the Tabernacle (after a whole bunch of consecrations had been carried out) it made me wonder... What did they talk about for seven days?

I never did complete the play, though I'd written a portion of it. To some extent it was autobiographical in that I imagined the varied personality components that my brothers and I share and don't share. Each of us is distinct from the others, so the conversations this family had during the course of seven days in lock up could have easily been very interesting.

The first day, I projected that the conversations revolved around the meaning of all these things that they had just experienced, from the Exodus from Egypt to Moses on Mount Horeb for 40 days where he met God and received the ten commandments... and what did all those details regarding the ritual sacrifices mean, and why had their father Aaron been selected for this important office of the priesthood.

Day two would likely be more of the same, but as the days wore on I imagined (In my script) that these men talked about other things as well, including stories from childhood, stories about growing up. Maybe they got their father telling stories they's never heard before about when he grew up, and stories about Moses, who had been raised in Pharaoh's house and what led to Moses fleeing Egypt and how leadership is created. Who knows?

In my skit, though, as the week progressed there were also conflicts as the personalities grated. Time began to pass slowly and that week began to feel like a year. By the fifth or sixth day things come to a head and things change. There is a breaking that takes place, and the family ends up discovering a new kind of honesty, love, acceptance, mercy and such that it had never known before. This level of intimacy became possible only after they had been quarantined for a week in a small space where there were no distractions or diversions.

That skit was mentally mapped out and partially written perhaps 30 years ago, and I found it unearthed by this week's quarantine orders. Unless we take time and make time, most of us are so busy and distracted most of the time that we don't really know one another, including the people in our own families. One of the positive's of the Covid-19 pandemic may be how it forces us into some reflective thinking about who we are, and perhaps some deeper levels of communication with on another.

John Updike's Four Life Forces
IN THE WEE HOURS last night I thought again about John Updike's four life forces. It seemed like a relevant time to share this blog post that I wrote in 2012.

John Updike once suggested that there are four life forces: Love, Habit, Time and Boredom. This morning's ramble (reference to my daily blogging) is the product of Habit. I'm not sure I have that much to say, and the proper thing to do when you have nothing to say is to shut your mouth. But then, I digress.

When Updike speaks of love he is referring to passion. Passion is the driver that impels us to make sacrifices in order to accomplish great things. Passion is what makes Olympians, not simply skill. There are plenty of pianists with skill, but it's passion that sets apart the cream from the rest. It's passion that leads them to make the sacrifices necessary to sharpen their virtuosity.

Time is another one of those amazing things that has been endlessly debated and dissected. What is time really?

Wikipedia explains it this way: Time is the continuing sequence of events occurring in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future, a measure of the durations and frequencies of events and the intervals between them. Time has long been a major subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars.

Like life itself, we all know what it is but don't always do well at explaining it. That doesn't stop people from trying. Here is an interesting article from Wired magazine titled What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory. The article is an interview with Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech. He begins by noting something we all have noticed because it is obvious. The future is different from the past. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. Why? 

There was an album we listened to a long time ago called It's A Beautiful Day and it had a song on it about time. At the time I did not know that the most memorable line was actually a quote from Henry Van Dyke. "Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity."

In short, time is perceived differently based on our circumstances. Hence there are some who propose ideas like the notion that time does not exist, it is simply a perception.

The first point, "Time is too slow for those who wait," brings to mind a scene from Immortal Beloved, a film about Beethoven. Beethoven (Gary Oldman) is on his way to a hotel for a tryst with a woman he loves. But it's a rainy night and the wheels on his horse-drawn carriage get stuck in the mud. Time is slipping away and the painful strains of the second movement of his Seventh Symphony fill the theater with his anguish. Eventually, the woman becomes impatient with waiting, and leaves.

Boredom is another of those interesting forces that surprised me when Updike placed it in this list, but it's a real force. Bertrand Russell once observed, "Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it." What strikes me is that last part of this statement. People really do fear boredom. And this may be why some people fear death. What if there really is an afterlife and it was boring? Eternal boredom would truly be hell.

* * * *
It's this last life force that our current quarantine brought to mind. I wonder how well we'd all be doing if we did not have Internet connections and television sets or iPhones and were truly quarantined from one another. Would our actions be primarily driven by efforts to stave off boredom? Or would we motivated by the Passion driver, seeking to fulfill our purpose in being?

Hang in there, friends. And don't forget to wash your hands.

Related Links
The Three Phases of Time

If you have ever read the Bible from start to finish, then you will likely recall that there are certain sections that can be exceedingly tedious. I'm thinking here of certain genealogical sections and the minutia detailed in certain places like the Books of Numbers and Leviticus. When I got bogged down in these two books, I went to a blind friend and borrowed a couple vinyl records of Alexander Scorby reading the Bible. By listening, and he kept reading non-stop, I made it through without falling asleep. Maybe not the best way, but that's how I did it the first time through. 


Photo at the top of page available through Creative Commons. Attribution details here.

Flashback Friday: A New Thought About Tomorrow, That I Had in the Past

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2016

I had a new thought this weekend. It flowed out of a quote that went something like this: "The future is the past unfrozen."

As I reflected on this notion, however, I couldn't help but think about the behavior of water in its different states. The idea that our past is frozen made sense to me, and I thought about how water freezes below a specific temperature. But once it is unfrozen it can also be altered yet again when you boil it or heat it above 212 degrees F. It becomes an invisible gas at that point.

It's interesting that time therefore has three phases: past, present and future. Likewise water has three phases: solid, liquid and gas.

What we see when we apply this notion to time is that all of time is a unity, but it is experienced in different forms. 

Try as we might, we can't alter the past. Our achievements and mistakes leave a permanent record. They are frozen in time. Our present, on the other hand, is fluid. This fluid present is where we live and experience life. The future is invisible. It is so unformed it cannot be seen, like unpolluted air.

If the whole of time is one unit, then this would explain how God can be described as being the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and be both simultaneously. Some people see a fatalism inherent in God knowing the end from the beginning, but the paradox is this: the present is ever fluid until it is past. Because the present is fluid, anything is possible. It's up to us to decide "what next." Our decisions today will determine what will be frozen in time tomorrow.

* * * *
Is it true that what will be will be? What will be is up to us. Is the future inevitable? Yes, but only after it has been frozen in the past.

Related Links
The Future Remains Unwrit 

A New Thought About Time -- Rolling the Past, Present and Future Into One

I had a new thought this weekend. It flowed out of a quote that went something like this: "The future is the past unfrozen."

As I reflected on this notion, however, I couldn't help but think about the behavior of water in its different states. I liked the idea that our past was frozen, and I thought about how water freezes below a specific temperature. But once it is unfrozen it can also be altered yet again when you boil it or heat it above 212 degrees F. It becomes an invisible gas at that point.

It's interesting that time therefore has three phases: past, present and future. Likewise water has three phases: solid, liquid and gas.

What we see when we apply this notion to time is that all of time is a unity, but it is experienced in different forms. Try as we might, we can't alter the past. Our achievements and mistakes leave a permanent record. They are frozen in time. Our present, on the other hand, is fluid. This fluid present is where we live and experience life. The future is invisible. It is so unformed it cannot be seen, like unpolluted air.

If the whole of time is one unit, then this would explain how God can be described as being the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and be both simultaneously. Some people see a fatalism inherent in God knowing the end from the beginning, but the paradox is this: the present is ever fluid until it is past. Because the present is fluid, anything is possible. It's up to us to decide "what next." Our decisions today will determine what will be frozen in time tomorrow.

* * * *
Is it true that what will be will be? What will be is up to us. Is the future inevitable? Yes, but only after it has been frozen in the past.

Time Will Tell... Enya's "Only Time"

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

"Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols." -- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Time is one of those things that many a mind has pondered. It's relevant to all in all walks of life. Much has been written about it. Napoleon famously said, "I may lose a battle but I will never lose a minute." Peter Drucker, in his book The Effective Executive, devoted a chapter to the importance of managing one's time.

Enya approaches time from another angle. Time is something that tests us, and though our intentions may be good and feel real, only time will tell.

Youth and idealism go hand-in-hand, and they're meant to. A portion of this is due in part to our lack of life experience when young. The world's wrongs stand out, but the forces arrayed against fixing them are far more veiled, and more pervasive than one may easily see.

We can also be idealistic about love. Hollywood fuels this fire, and profits from it. Proclamations of faith and love are easily made, but hardships test those ideals. As the proverb says, "The crucible is for silver, the furnace for gold and the Lord tries hearts." Life tests us. Relationships test us as well. And as Enya sings here, time is the real test. We make promises, take vows... then bruise one another. Can we forgive? Does time heal all wounds?

Finally, one more fine quote on this theme:
"Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed." -- Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon

In other words, only time will tell.

Only Time

Who can say where the road goes?
Where the day flows?
Only time
And who can say if your love grows
As your heart chose?
Only time

Who can say why your heart sighs
As your love flies?
Only time
And who can say why your heart cries
When your love lies?
Only time

Who can say when the roads meet
That love might be in your heart?
And who can say when the day sleeps
If the night keeps all your heart,
Night keeps all your heart?

Who can say if your love grows
As your heart chose?
Only time
And who can say where the road goes?
Where the day flows?
Only time

Who knows? Only time

About Enya

Born in 1961, Enya is an Irish vocalist, instrumentalist and composer.

In addition to performing for Pope John Paul II, Enya participated in a live broadcast on British television for Christmas Eve in 1997, before she flew home to County Donegal to join her family at midnight Mass. She still sings in her mother's choir every Christmas at midnight Mass, at St. Mary's Church. 

"My influences are with Irish music, church music and classical music," she said in a 1997 interview. 

In 2006, Enya ranked third in a list of the wealthiest Irish entertainers with an estimated fortune of £75 million, and No. 95 in the Sunday Times Rich List of the richest 25 Irish people.

Meantime, life goes on all around you... like the river of time.

The Motherboard of Our Minds

It seems like we are always trying to figure out what's really going on or how things work. In point of fact, there are so many things we hardly understand, questions that we have no answers to. Often we can't understand our immediate relationships, let alone the events taking place in the other parts of the world.

While reading about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) I was thinking about how we don't entirely understand how our own bodies work, or that something we call the "mind." What is a mind? Is the mind like the motherboard in a computer with all its various components? Are our brains hardwired for certain behaviors, but requiring programming to learn other things? How does a memory chip work?

Thinking about all these things got me asking myself other questions.

Why does reality correspond to our senses? That is, why does the outside world have tactile and visual and aural aspects? What if we had our sense of smell but there were no smells to smell in this world of ours? What if we have a sixth sense that doesn't correspond to anything in this world so that it remains dormant?

How does imagination work? When a poet creates a poem does he build it or discover it the way an archaeologist discovers the legbone of a dinosaur?

Which has more value, the art we've created or the work we are about to create?

How do our emotions work? How does our subconscience influence our conscious feelings and behavior? How much do we control and how much is defined by our programming?

Why do we respond to some things and remain unmoved by others? It's interesting that magnetic attraction is not visible to the five senses, yet we recognize the effects of magnets and agnetic attraction.

And then there are all the questions about time. What is time? Why does it sometimes seem to fly by so swiftly and other times drag ever so slow. Is time a fundamental part of the universe or only something perceived by our minds? In religion, God is sometimes referred to as the Alpha and the Omega, and it is posited that God is at the beginning and the end of time simultaneously? How does that work?

When it comes to computers and robots, is it possible as some believe that we will create robots that  are smarter than we are and thus take over the world and turn the human race into slaves?

What about music. What causes us to be so responsive to music? Why are certain combinations of sounds so comforting, uplifting, energizing or agitating?

Well... that's enough for now. It's time to move along.  

An Insight About Time for Writers, Artists and Dreamers

Here's a thought for the day. The second half of this has sustained me for much of my life, but two weeks ago I heard both halves together for the first time. It went something like this:

"We tend to overestimate what can be done in the short term and underestimate what we can accomplish in the long haul." 

The first half of this statement, though complete in and of itself, serves as a setup for the second part. Both portions reveal the elasticity of our perceptions of time.

Time is one of those very strange things that even though measured (sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, 24 hours to a day) is perceived as slipping by fast or dragging so very slow. As the song goes,

Time is too slow for those who wait 
And time is too swift for those who fear 
Time is too long for those who grieve 
And time is too short for those that laugh

When we're busy we hardly notice time at all. When we're waiting in line or waiting for a meeting to end, it becomes the only thing we're conscious of, an inexorable, fidgety anguish sets in.

But it's the second half of the maxim that I would like to underscore, especially if you are a young person. Life is much longer than you think, and you can accomplish much more than you realize if you go after it.

Look how many books Stephen King has written? But when he was in his early twenties, he had but one.

Look how many albums Bob Dylan has produced. There was a time when that landscape lay before him and all he had was one thin dime.

Lincoln purportedly once said, "The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time." Indeed. If I was told I had to produce 2600 short essays as a writing assignment it would overwhelm me. But here I have been blogging continuously for near seven years, one blog entry at a time, and we're now well past that, plus six books, hundreds of illustrations to accompany them, and...

Well, all this to say is that you can do it, too. If you're a poet, try writing a poem a day. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece. Just make it a habit to keep the juices flowing. If you keep a journal, daily is best and whether a short entry or long, push yourself to make it interesting for someone to read, even if years later it's only you.

These latter lines are more for writers. Maybe you're a carpenter, or a jeweler, or whatever. Little by little you can accomplish much. But it always begins with today.

Today is the only real time we have that we can be sure of. Expend yourself. Make something happen.

It begins with a dream. 

Updike's Four Life Forces

John Updike once suggested that there are four life forces: Love, Habit, Time and Boredom. This morning's ramble here is the product of habit. I'm not sure I have that much to say, and the proper thing to do when you have nothing to say is to shut your mouth. But then, I digress.

When Updike speaks of love he is referring to passion. Passion is the driver that impels us to make sacrifices in order to accomplish great things. Passion is what makes Olympians, not simply skill. There are plenty of pianists with skill, but it's passion that sets apart the cream from the rest.

Time is another one of those amazing things that has been endlessly debated and dissected. What is time really?

Wikipedia explains it this way: Time is the continuing sequence of events occurring in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future, a measure of the durations and frequencies of events and the intervals between them. Time has long been a major subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars.

Like life itself, we all know what it is but don't always do well at explaining it. That doesn't stop people from trying. Here is an interesting article from Wired magazine titled "What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory." The article is an interview with Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech. He begins by noting something we all have noticed because it is obvious. The future is different from the past. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. Why? 

There was an album we listened to a long time ago called It's A Beautiful Day and it had a song on it about time. At the time I did not know that the most memorable line was actually a quote from Henry Van Dyke. "Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity."

In short, time is perceived differently based on our circumstances. Hence there are some who propose ideas like the notion that time does not exist, it is simply a perception.

The first point, "Time is too slow for those who wait," brings to mind a scene from Immortal Beloved, a film about Beethoven. Beethoven (Gary Oldman) is on his way to a hotel for a tryst with a woman he loves. But it's a rainy night and the wheels on his horse-drawn carriage get stuck in the mud. Time is slipping away and the painful strains of the second movement of his Seventh Symphony fill the theater with his anguish. Eventually, the woman becomes impatient with waiting, and leaves.

Boredom is another of those interesting forces that surprised me when Updike placed it in this list, but it's a real force. Bertrand Russell once observed, "Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it." What strikes me is the last part of this statement. People really do fear boredom. And this may be why some people fear death. What if there really is an afterlife and it was boring? Eternal boredom would truly be hell.

Much more could be said here, but it's time to go to press. Besides, I wouldn't want to bore you with more than you can digest. This is only a blog and I am only sowing seeds, not steaks. Have a great day.

It's About Time

"Redeeming the time for the days are evil." ~ Ephesians 5:16

Who was the most written about person in the 19th century? Many would guess Abraham Lincoln, whose influence extends to this day. They would, of course, be wrong. Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, was a luminary at the beginning of that century, but likewise, to guess Jefferson would be an incorrect answer.

A few who know me may know the answer to this question, because I have written about this person and consider his achievements somewhat remarkable, even though we know him best for the major failure which was a turning point in his career. I speak here of Waterloo, and with that you have guessed I speak of Napoleon Bonaparte. By the end of the 19th century more than 100,000 books were written about Napoleon, his life, thought and achievements. Considering how little we know about our American presidents, it comes as know surprise that we know hardly anything of some of Europe’s past leaders such as Queen Victoria or Archduke Ferdinand... other than the names.

I discovered Napoleon while reading one of my several books about Ulysses S. Grant. It was in the preface of the book Grant Wins the War, a volume detailing his victory at the Battle of Vicksburg, that I learned what a brilliant general Napoleon was. The author, James R. Arnold, noted that military historians cited two battles from the Civil War as significant enough to be termed “brilliant” by the standards of leadership, strategy and implementation. One of these was Grant’s Vicksburg campaign, the other General Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah campaign. The author noted, almost as an aside, that of history’s top twenty battles, there were fourteen conceived and executed by the martial genius of Napoleon Bonaparte. Fourteen of the top twenty battles of history. It made me desirous to learn more.

What did he do and how did he do it? After doing a bit of research on the Internet I learned that the best single volume was a 1200 page book by a writer named Chandler called The Campaigns of Napoleon. Here are just a few insights from this volume which I feel worth sharing.

One thing I learned was that one of Napoleon’s greatest skills was translating theory into action. Indeed, he considered himself a man of action, and one who did not feel it necessary to always be original. He read extensively and borrowed from history.

According to Chandler he was "a developer and perfecter of the ideas of others." He drew his major ideas from books. "Read and meditate upon the wars of the great captains,” he said. “This is the only means of learning the art of war."

His attitude toward planning was interesting. Chandler writes that Napoleon was "extremely thorough in his planning. Very little was left to chance.” Yet, at the same time, he recognized Chance as a variable and believed every plan should allow a period of time to remedy or exploit the unpredictable.

Plan well, but be open to the unexpected, is as applicable to our personal lives as it is to any general. As the Proverb states, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” (Prov. 16:9) Or to paraphrase, “Man proposes, but God disposes.”

I find Napoleon’s attitude toward time to be most instructive. For Napoleon, the loss of time in war was irreparable. He considered strategy to be the art of making use of time & space. However, "space we can recover, time never." And my favorite of all Napoleonic quotes: "I may lose a battle but I shall never lose a minute."

You can always get money to replace lost money or goods. Lost time is lost forever.

I think this is what was meant by the quote above about redeeming the time, for the days are evil. Children have no concept of the brevity of life. It is only as we age that we begin to appreciate what a gift it can be. One day that gift will be all used up, and we shall not have the chance to re-do it.

As Napoleon once noted, "All that is to happen is written down. Our hour is marked and we cannot prolong it a minute longer than fate has predestined." Hence his efforts to seize hold of each day and make the most of it.

Good advice. Go and do likewise.