Would Time by any other name still stink the same?

A wordy intermezzo

One of the things I love the most about my life is that it occasionally produces short, electric word storms that get me going.
They get other people going, too, although not necessarily in the same direction.

Here's a snippet of one such impromptu exchange that happened as I was standing on a terrace with an acquaintance of mine who is a physicist, on August 10th, the notte di San Lorenzo, when Saint Lawrence sheds tears - AKA comets - and wishes come true.
I must have had a secret wish for a rambling conversation about time, because that certainly came true.

The beginning of the conversation is intentionally omitted.
You're welcome to insert one of your own making.

HE: You mean, our perception of time?

ME: Time is nothing but perception. You of all people should know that.
And maybe that's just it. We name it as if it were something outside, a force of nature or something, when in reality it's all on the inside. All of it.

HE: Not all of it.

ME: All of it. And I know everyone is supposed to sort of know that, but intellectual grasp is one thing and true knowledge, conviction, is another. If time were used as a name for a perception, almost sense-like, like smell, sight, touch, maybe that would make Time easier to grasp. And maybe even manipulate.

HE (silent, staring at me):

You just gave me an idea.

You just gave me an idea.

(It's not a typing error; I gave him an idea twice. Or maybe he thought I would not understand the first time.)



I wish I could say he dramatically stormed out and ended up producing something that will be on all news channels. Or at least in Nature magazine.
But he didn't. He stayed for pizza and apple beer, and even watched part of Australia's Next Top Model (a rerun) on TV with me.

Still, he said I gave him an idea.
Let's just hope it's about physics.

Just a reminder

On this day, 109 years ago,
two lucky women embarked on a journey like no other.

Versailles, by Dont Techno.

Moving house

The following report comes from a reader called simply Barbara.
She does not wish to be identified any further. (Which is perfectly OK.)
It is posted here verbatim, with only a link inserted, to refer you back to a post she mentioned.

In her own words...

"This happened maybe four years ago, in summer time. I don't recall any other details, as it was a long time ago. But after reading the post about the house in England that keeps appearing and disappearing I remembered this event that baffled me at the time.

About two miles from my former home (I lived in a city) there is a tall woody hill with an inn at the top that many people like to visit on weekends and after work to chill out. There is only one road leading up there from the direction of the city (where I lived), although there is another road on the other side of the hill.
I used to go there from time to time because it's close and offers a very nice panoramic view of the city.

On this particular day I drove there with a couple of family members and a friend.
As we were nearing the beginning of the slope, just before the road starts going uphill, I noticed a tiny oldfashioned cottage on the left side of the road. It was very tiny, with whitewashed (but dirty) walls and a straw roof.
This sort of building was very common here centuries ago, but nowadays it's very difficult to find a cottage like that.

Th cottage was standing alone on top of a small grassy hill, just above the modern housing development sprawling on both sides of the road. It looked old and abandoned.

I was very surprised because I didn't remember seeing it before, and enchanted to see a cottage like that and I thought to myself it would be a perfect "retreat" for me to do my writing and stuff. I also remember thinking it was a ridiculous idea considering it was so close to my home, but I really liked it. I rememebr thinking I would have to ask a relative of mine who is a lawyer how to go about it.

Later that day, on our way back home, I didn't remember to look because I was engrossed in a conversation we were having.
But I did remember to look the next time we went there, maybe two months later.

The cottage wasn't there!

I remember thinking it was sooo typical! Every time I like something, a product or a service, whatever, they discontinue it or it becomes unavailable to me. It happens all the time, with makeup, with perfume, with TV shows I like.
But I was especially sad that the cottage had been torn down because it was so unique.

Maybe three or four months later we went to the hill again to have a "twilight drink" (like a "night cap", only it wasn't night yet :)). I didn't even bother to look for the place where the cottage had stood on our way there. Besides, we were talking, so I only remembered it just as we were passing the spot where I had seen it, so I didn't really look.

But as we were driving home I was sitting in the back looking through the car window on my right side... and there was the cottage again!

I asked the person who was driving if he could stop, but it was really impossible (too much traffic).
When I got home I called that relative who was a lawyer and asked her if she could take a picture of that cottage the next time she goes to the hill (because she used to go there often, whereas I have a disability that prevents me from walking for any length of time and I do not own a car).
She could not recall any such cottage (and she lived nearby), so I gave her a precise description of the site.

The next time we talked she said she saw no such cottage. She described to me the surrounding houses, and the description fit the place I had seen, only there was no cottage.

I don't know what to make of this. There is only one road leading up the slope, the road we took. You simply cannot take any other road because there is no other road.
Also, the distance is very short, comparatively, so it's not like there are a lot of such roadside grassy slopes. In fact there is only one, with modern houses below - and that solitary cottage was standing high on the slope, above the houses. It was extremely distinctive - the only house with a straw roof I've seen here! - so there's no way I confused it with some other house.
Also, it was not a prefabricated structure that could be taken down and reassembled again (not to mention that it looked old and abandoned).

I don't live in that city anymore and I don't visit the hill. The few people that I mentioned it to and were familiar with the place didn't seem to recall any such cottage.

I have no idea what that was.
But I do know what I saw.... Twice!"

Cottage, by Proama.

Thank you very much, Barbara.
Personally I find such inconspicuously placed events fascinating and even poetic, in an odd sort of way.

And by the way (no pun intended ;)), I gather you hadn't read the story about a certain hill at the time of your writing... or you would count yourself lucky that the hill itself was there. :)



About the image:

Such a beautiful story deserves a beautiful picture. This one, we thought, was beautiful, even though the structure is just a wooden shack, not a brick and mortar (and straw) cottage, like the one that Barbara saw.

We did not ask for permission to insert it here, but it certainly wasn't because of lack of respect towards the author.
You can see the picture here, and the author's gallery if you click the link beneath the picture.

Mind fields: Are "ghosts" glimpses of parallel worlds?

A reader called Val B. wrote in to ask do we think 'ghosts' are glimpses of other dimensions, say of parallel worlds or alternate realities, as it were.

Apparently it was this post that triggered your question, Val.
I am glad. Because in that post we broach - ever so lightly and superficially - the question of the nature of "ghosts" (expounded also in this post).

Personally I find "ghost" to be a catch-all term that catches precisely nothing.
In all too many people it seems to be an automatic response (never a good thing, not in my book) to all sorts of unexpected or "illogical" apparitions.
Even worse, underlying there seems to be a deeply rooted but mindless preconception that "ghosts" are: a) dead people, who b) ended, usually tragically, in c) the place where the apparition occurs.

Really?
How do we know that?

We don't.

I understand the need by many people to feel there is an existence beyond death. Who wouldn't?

But such apparitions rarely prove - or disprove, for that matter - anything of the sort.
Besides... I firmly believe that the truth, and only the truth, does set us free.
And stereotypical thinking - jumping to conclusions - is by definition removed from the truth. It disregards the truth, whatever it may be. Even worse, it disregards the need to quest for truth.

It would be interesting and very useful to compile a classification of different types of apparitions.
In fact, am sure it's been done, but I have yet to find a good compilation of the sort.
However, they can be roughly divided in two main categories: apparitions where perception seems to be unilateral; and apparitions where perception seems to be mutual.

There are a number of instances that would certainly seem to indicate that certain apparitions are glimpses of perfectly ordinary, banal moments in a long-since-deceased person's life.


What's puzzling about such cases, if you think about it, is that the vision isn't reciprocal. In other words, the "apparition" doesn't seem to notice the person who can see her or him.

Then, there are cases - they seem to be much rarer - where the vision is, or seems to be, reciprocal. (Here is one such case.)


Regarding the first type (which could be further subdivided into various categories), I am increasingly leaning towards the tentative conclusion that there probably is an all-pervading "medium" - something akin to what the ancients called aether - that absorbs and automatically records everything that takes place, reflecting it back when the circumstances are right.
(Or perhaps everything is there all the time, but we can only occasionally catch a glimpse of it.)

Everything, every single molecule of our physical (and possibly para-physical) world, seems to be composed of this mysterious film-like subtle substance, or somehow partaking in it.

That could explain visions such as the Roman legion marching endlessly through a cellar in York. That was clearly a vision - not a recreation of that event. In other words, it was like a tape playing on TV - not a reoccurrence of an ancient occurrence.
How do we know?
Because the lower part of the legs and the feet of the soldiers were not visible.
They were following a road, the level of which was in those days much lower than today.

In other cases, it seems as if the individual memory of a person, long gone, is the source of visions. It is as if it created a field of experience - or, more accurately, as if it projected its own field of experience remembered for others to, literally, step in.

Still other apparitions, especially recurring and unchanging visions (i.e. the various "white ladies", "grey ladies", etc.), may be the result of cumulative collective imaging (which is not exactly the same as imagining). In other words, they may be externalised mental "growths", fed by the collective mind of their environment, including the mind fields of those who have long since died.


But it's the "mutual" apparitions that puzzle me.
In such cases one could speculatively surmise that a two-way glimpse of parallel timelines is taking place.
If all time is happening all the time - only our minds are adapted to a "tunnel vision" that helps us remain relatively stable in an endless, timeless ocean of apparent chaos - then it's not outside the realm of possibility that occasionally the "veil" should part for a few instants, perhaps ruffled by the breeze of some unusual electromagnetic activity influencing our brain and our mind, affording a mutual view of what is, only perceived by two individual (i.e. limited) minds as two different points in spacetime.
And that might be true even for the realm of what could have been.
(Ask Michio Kaku - or almost any of the authors featured in the side bar - to explain it to you. :))


Final conclusion?
None can be made at this point, by anyone - except, maybe, to conclude that we know nothingabout the nature of the world and of our very lives, and should proceed accordingly.


And isn't that a gloriously liberating acknowledgement? :)



P.S. I can tell this post is going to be SO edited in the future.
So please, do come back at a later time.