Cheating Time
I finished the essay on the subject of time. That’s my second read. And I’ll likely read it again. I’ve been intrigued with “time” for many years. I cannot help but notice that a great deal of poetry happens to be verses that meditate upon the difference that times passage makes in human consciousness and in the Nature that envelops us. There is no escape. We are in time and of time. To speak of time is our way of expressing change. The writer includes a list of terms that show our varied uses of the concept of time. Many of the terms I know well through much use. A few are unfamiliar to me. Sidereal time for example. That is the measurement of time relative to the earths rotation and the distant fixed stars. This contrasts with time as the relationship between the earths rotation and the sun, which is called a day. If you want to point your telescope into the night sky at a distant star, you’ll need the coordinates provided by sidereal time. A common or clock time day is 24 hours. A mean sidereal day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.0916 seconds.
Since my teenage years I’ve been fascinated by drag racing. Drag racing is a contest of physics. The challenge is to build a vehicle that will transect from point A to point B which is 1,320 ft distant (a quarter mile) in the shortest time possible. It’s about mass, mechanical engineering, the chemistry of combustion, aerodynamics, and a lot more. if you’ve spent any time at a drag strip you will recognize the jargon as an esoteric description of a hand-built dragster, making maximum horsepower, hurtling the driver toward the timing lights at the finish line. With each pass, the crew and the machine are improved to cheat time, just a little bit more. A tenth of a second is a very long time in drag racing.
It is delightful to hear the driver of a nitro methane powered fuel car verbally describe his four-second trip from the starting line to the timing lights at the finish line. He or she will often take many minutes to describe the experience. That’s a kind of time dilation: the difference in measured time described by two different observers. Yeah, I know that I am using and abusing a term of physics. Strictly speaking time dilation is the difference that gravity, or a difference in velocity makes upon two alternative observations of the passage of time. You can take my word, a fuel car driver will describe a 4 second 300 mph pass very differently than that of a crew member who watches from behind the starting line.
Time is a persistent feature of consciousness, of our self-awareness, and of our necessary link with others. How often do we wish that we could cheat time? That is go-back-in-time to “take back” something that we regret saying or doing? Words are actions which have continuing consequences. Words are tools by which we construct a better world, or weapons by which dystopia is created. Time, the chain of cause and effect, is inexorable, ruthless. Thus the experience of regret or of gratitude, the contrary responses to memory of our past actions.
This has been said many times, and better by others. I offer this tune and lyric that I have returned to often in past years.
5 thoughts on “Cheating Time”
Jerry, I must dispute your last paragraph. The Cher song, a purely emotive cry, is in no way superior to your thoughtful reflection about the nature of time. She agonizes over a single lapse with one individual, while your musing clarifies the value of each ephemeral moment — as an experience to savor in itself, and as a choice point determining one’s path to the future.
Your line of ” Over and over with each pass, the crew and the machine are improved to cheat time,” causes me to ask, how do you cheat time? The racers are trying to reduce the time it takes to make a run, but cheat it seems just a tad off.
My use of “cheat” is to indicate the goal of compressing, reducing the elapsed time from start to finish. Not an easy thing to do.
Overall one of your best posts. Time is the measurement from point A to point B in all things (including a snail’s trek across a rock, a dragster’s four second blast and our brief lifespan). It is a direct arrow that only appears to offer a meandering path. If Zeno teaches us anything it is that time and space are not infinite, they cannot be divided into ever smaller segments, so the tick of the clock is real, each second marking our march into the future while defining our past; that straight shot from cradle to grave. Enjoy the ride for it will pass as quickly as the drag racer’s 1,320 foot arc.
As I often do, I offer my own semi-poetic take on the topic at hand. Thank you for indulging me:
Acceptance
In the distance old men
gather at the edge.
They stand, waiting,
shrunken and frail,
depleted of a strength
that once varnished their bodies.
A voice calls, “Join us.”
I shake my head.
“I am not old,” I reply.
The old men chuckle.
“None of us are,” says another.
They all nod.
I step closer so they might hear,
“Time is of no consequence,
for I dream the dreams
of a young man.
You are old. You’re at the edge.
I am not. “
One man speaks,
“We have been friends
since we were boys.
We’ve grown and loved
and aged and you
have lost yourself.”
“Come stand with us.
The edge is just an edge
and you are not alone.”
Looking down, I see my hands
and know that he is right.
So I take another step.
“Acceptance” sums up the challenge that time presents to individual humans. Seems to me that’s the only way to move ahead with grace and self possession. Failure to accept one’s finite life, is to succumb to darkness. And as your poem indicates we do not stand alone.