A bubble in the flow of Time

Time is of your own making,

its clock ticks in your head.

The moment you stop thought

time too stops dead.


Angelus Silesius, 17th century

Considering how long has been since my last post, you would be excused if you thought I've gone to Bennington, Vermont... :)

I wish.
But no. I have been around, just not in Vermont.
Time has its way with us regardless of where we are.

Or does it?

Here is a story you might find interesting.

***

ESCAPE FROM TIME

The great thing about time is that it goes on.

Arthur Eddington

"Although theologians and philosophers wrangle over the technicalities of the logical relationship between time and eternity, many religious people believe that the most powerful insights into the subject are provided, not by academic debate, but by direct revelation:

I remember that I was going to bathe from a stretch of shingle to which the few people who stayed in the village seldom went. Suddenly the noise of the insects was hushed. Time seemed to stop. A sense of infinite power and peace came upon me. I can best liken the combination of timelessness with amazing fullness of existence to the feeling one gets in watching the rim of a great silent fly-wheel or the unmoving surface of a deep, strongly-flowing river. Nothing happened: yet existence was completely full. All was clear.

This personal story, recounted by the physicist and Anglican bishop Ernest Barnes in his 1929 Gifford Lectures, eloquently captures the combination of timelessness and clarity so often said to be associated with mystical or religious experiences."

***

Now that gives a different meaning to the expression "flow of Time"...
I wonder what Leonardo (da Vinci to you) would say to that.
Here's what he did say about water as a metaphor for time:


"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes, so with time present."

(from LEONARDO DA VINCI'S NOTE BOOKS)


Regardless of his many - and truly great - talents, time ailed Leonardo as much as it ails any prince or pauper of this world. It seems - but I may be totally wrong - that the one thing Leonardo missed was "mystical" - or, if you prefer - profoundly spiritual insight into the nature of... well, nature. Nature as an appearance, a semblance - an illusion.

It cannot be blamed on his era, even though its defining feature - its "humanism" - relied on a fundamentally flawed foundation: the premise that man is the alpha and omega of Creation (by implication making man's faulty interpretation of the sensory input as "all there is" a generally accepted standard of "reality") .

After all, even epochs deeply steeped in "humanism" could not prevent "mystic" insights by individuals here and there. Angelus Silesius, the author of the opening quote here, was such an individual: an extremely interesting individual.

Still, I cannot blame Leonardo.
But that's yarn for a different story altogether.
In fact, I am already sorry I mentioned it here.


Anyway, the story of bishop (and before that scientist) Ernest William Barnes and the accompanying text are an excerpt from a fascinating book I would recommend reading to anyone despairing over the apparently irreversible "flow" of time:

The beggar at the garden gate

Central Europe, cca 1943.

A little girl is playing with her cousin in the garden.
It's wartime, food is scarce at best, scurvy is rampant. But children can find joy even in wartime, if given half a chance.

Suddenly they notice a man standing by the garden gate: a tall, youngish man cloaked in a coat that resembles a patchwork of rags. A beggar.

The girls hadn't seen a beggar in a very long time, and not only because they live in a "nice" part of town, but because the German occupation army made sure that beggars and other such undesirable elements were appropriately disposed of, so they didn't roam the streets molesting law-abiding citizens and breeding low morale with their depressing presence.

The beggar is looking at them, smiling.
He doesn't say anything.
But the girls, being kind and curious, as many children often are, approach the gate.

"Could you girls spare a piece of bread, a carrot, perhaps - something, anything, for me to eat?" he asks kindly.

"Oh, the bread is locked up, and I cannot take any of it without mamma's permission, and she is not home... But I think we have a turnip! Would you like a turnip?" the first girl asks.

The beggar smiles warmly at her and doesn't say anything.
The girl turns to her cousin and says to her: "Go and get the turnip! It's in the cupboard."
Then she turns to the beggar again.

He isn't there anymore.

Bewildered, the girl opens the gate and runs out. She looks up and down the deserted suburban street.

He is nowhere to be seen.

Her cousin, returning with the turnip, helps her look for him - only, there is nowhere to look, really. There is nobody in the street, as far as the eye can see. There are only locked gates: lines of locked garden gates, with no sign of life, except for the birds chirping in the trees.

The girls wait on the street for a long, long time.

They never saw that beggar again.
And they never found out - or figured out - where he could've gone in such a short span of time.

But that day, in the garden, the little girl found something else: she found mystery; and she found wonder. That day, and although she didn't realise it at the time, her world expanded beyond the visible. That day the world offered her a glimpse of its true face: the face of Janus, forever steeped in uncertainty, shimmering with wonder and doubt and mystery and possibilities.

***

This is an atypical "time slip" story: not a good choice at all for starting a blog on "time slips". In fact, I am almost sure it doesn't even qualify as a "time slip" proper.
(And please, do notice that I haven't listed any of the barometric or hygroscopic conditions, or listed any possible sources of radiation, or any of the specifics that I am asking for here - with the exception of a turnip.)

But it has a special place in my memory - and in my heart - because it became a precious part of my heritage. The girl was my mother; and this story was for me one of the earliest lessons in mystery - that precious commodity that, according to Einstein (and my mother) we cannot do without... unless we're willing to settle for a death-like existence, mere survival of the body, a vegetative existence within the confines of our fallible bodily senses.

That's what she gave me (among many, many other gems that cannot be bought for money - only for love): a world - the world - without limits; a world where nothing is impossible because we don't really know what is possible. And so we tread without fear, with the timeless wind of mystery in our sails.