Relative Time
...a dispatch from bewilderness
How old is the universe? About a second and a half, or maybe just half, but that half has lasted 20 trillion years.
Two things I wish I had more of: relatives and time. As I write this, it is July 2024 and September 2006 at the same time. Sometimes it’s also the 50s, the 60s, the 70s. Or my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. Like I said, it’s relative.
In the 5,200 years since the Sumerians first etched pictograms on clay tablets, human beings have produced an astonishing wealth of creative expression on the topics of reason, love, and living with other people. We just haven’t managed to do it real well.
Once upon a time, there was a woman named it-doesn’t-matter. She lived in a town called I-don’t-remember and then something happened but I forget what. This is a problem with brain damage.
Any image breaks into fragments. A fogged out landscape where once in a while something emerges which I can discern; and less often, something emerges which I can recall.
Do you know what happens when you type the words "why am" into Google? Before you can type the next word, Google's Autocomplete function helpfully offers to complete your thought. The first suggestion: "Why am I so tired?" The second: "Why am I always tired?" This is followed by “Why is grass green?”
When you type “why is” into google, you get, in this order, why is human childbirth so painful, why is the sky blue, why is American internet so slow, why is water blue, why is the ocean salty, why is Einstein the poster boy for genius and why is there a “b” in doubt.
Also, “Why am I single?” Which is followed by, “Why am I still single?”
From day one, or day one of language, your mind “photographed” bodies and faces and voices and places and filed them in forever or never. “Forever” meant you’d always have them and could always find them, “never” meant you’d never need them. This was wrong. On both counts.
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