Starry Night

I look above my head
and see the starry night
you always loved to feel
the crisp, early fall night,
with one eye open
watching the meaning of
you and me
becoming more synchronized
with time,
as we weave bit and pieces
of our lives
in a tapestry made with love.
Painted with cerulean
summer night songs
into indigo autumn embraces
as we try to smile the minutes
of time away
afraid each day
may be the last
as we dance in the street
to the music in our hearts.

One attosecond - measuring time

"One attosecond [a billionth of a billionth of a second] - The most fleeting events that scientists can clock are measured in attoseconds. Researchers have created pulses of light lasting just 250 attoseconds using sophisticated high-speed lasers. Although the interval seems unimaginably brief, it is an aeon compared with Planck time - about 10 - 43 second- which is believed to be the shortest possible duration." A Matter of Time, Scientific American Special Edition

What the meaning of the word "is" is

It depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is - Bill Clinton

Says Dean Sluyter in the Zen Commandments: "Time is of the essence - the essence of our sense of being a limited, wavelike identity defined by specific traits, rather than limitless ocean." He believes that when you use words to categorize people you are "using the present tense to blur past behavior into an illusion of solid, continuous, once-and-future reality. "

Patterns

You were right,
driving madly toward the Southwest
I saw colors in the trees
the red and gold
melted into honey.
I tasted the bittersweet
inference of fall today.

I thought about our transition
learning the movements
of direction taken
separately,
wondering at the complexities
of whom we seem to be.

Looking at you
across the table,
your eyes are always
that soft brown
searching into mine
to understand
my impulsive passions
and chaotic nature.

And perhaps wondering why
you took it upon yourself
to live with it
day after day...
and I kid you about
your sense of order
secretly wishing it would
somehow take a hold of me.

Then I could so well
decide my future
developing each day
seeing a tangible
consensus of meaning.

And what follows
is the energy
that loving creates
to allow differences
within the patterns of our lives
moving forward together.

Transparent like a fish

Artistic thought for the day:

"You may think you’re being influenced by a person in the same room with you, when it is really from a star a thousand miles away. We are really transparent like fish and electric currents pass though us - we are very apt to identify ourselves with that current."

Quote: Walter Anderson, artist

See his paintings at http://www.walterandersonmuseum.org.

Constants of an inconstant nature

Physicists John D. Barrow and John K. Webb say "In the grand scheme of things, our observable universe is thought to be a small part of a multiverse. Other regions could have values of the fine-structure constant different from ours. In principle, astronauts could venture into those realms, but they would encounter a surreal scene, where the laws of physics that enable their existence were pulled out from under their feet."


From an article in "A Matter of Time", a special edition from Scientific American

Highway 75

Released into the night
riding
a fast car
on Highway 75,
oh, take me anywhere
on Highway 75.
Blurs of the city,
fast takes
in the corner of my eye
on Highway 75.
A hot and humid wind
to free my soul,
pushing it on Highway 75.
Vandross sings and
mystery, danger
dance me past my trials,
on Highway 75.

Of permanence and self

Says Dogen Zenji, in "Shobogenzo [Treasury of the Eye of True Dharma": "If one examines the 10,000 things with a deluded mind and body, one will suppose that one's mind and body are permanent. But if one practices intimately and returns to the true self, it will be clear that the 10,000 things are without self."

And, Dzigar Kongtrul says in "It's Up to You": "The experience of emptiness is not found outside the world of ordinary appearance, as many people mistakenly assume. In truth, we experience emptiness when the mind is free of grasping at appearance."

Lavender Teardrops

Rolling countryside
with wisteria like
lavender teardrops
over ancient, bony oaks'
dead arms,
no sense to make of it.
Into the red clay roads,
redder than Georgia,
blood red
and those who live it
are there waiting
blank-eyed and starring
like waiting for the next minute
because that is all there is.

The struggle too harsh
like a life only half-existing,
with a black eye
running, crying into sunsets
that cannot exist
in any half-ordinary sense.

And the anguish
is soothed by nightly
bottles of wine
full and warm
in crystal
to take the edge from
all of the sights.

If it were not for the
scarlet-orange blossom
or the translucent
celery-green stem
fractured in the water,
spotlighted and glistening,
yet the eyes keep starring...

But you are so warm
and your skin so soft.
You in your blue blazer
and handsome tan,
you walk me out of these
bad dreams.

Waking To Be Free

Lynx-eyed capture
moving quickly
between walls -
passionate abandonment
a sphere within a sphere
somewhere between horizon
and false consequence
waking to be free.

Daily sabotage
works over spontaneity
caged in prophecies
of the ordinary -
a tedious, complicated
gamut of order
based on
antiquated truths
in non-flux
oblique and gaunt
used and applied.

The universalist undermines
truths when absolutes are
tyranny and distorted in motion.

To absolve freedom of the
obscenities of the ordinary
passions must be set free
to transhape the world
and traverse beyond oppression
to nothing constant but the
evolution of our very being.

For Joan

The species procreates
then kills intself off
as you plant
red roses for your lover
and yellow-green squash
for you table.
Governments commit genocide
as you discover magic
in your night.

I let the heavy white wine
roll in my mouth
as I read your letter.
Feeling alienated again, are you?
Ah - but how usual this is
as you let that cynicism overwhelm
your oft forgotten mystery.

What about those elves
left in the forests?
Remember?
You were so certain.
Do you think romance
takes the edge from realities?
I do still.

Your herb island
has grown smaller
and pushed you off -
what ideal have you now?
And do you know the magic elixir?

Of time and paradox

"The passage of time is probably one of the most basic facet of human perception, for we feel time slipping by in our innermost selves in a manner that is altogether more intimate than our experience of, say, space or mass. The passage of time has been compared to the flight of an arrow and to an ever rolling stream, bearing us inexorably from past to future. Evocative though these images may be, they run afoul of a deep and devastating paradox. Nothing known in physics corresponds to the passage of time. Indeed, physicists insist that time doesn't flow at all; it merely is. "
Paul Davies, Scientific American Special Edition - a Matter of Time

"We take for granted that time ticks by at the same rate for everyone. But Einstein's theory of relativity shows that this assumption is not strictly true. The classic case of time disparity involves twins - one of whom leaves Earth and travels round-trip to a star at nearly the speed of light, arriving back much younger than his brother. This aging difference is noticeable only when long distances are traveled at speeds approximating the speed of light. "
Ronald C. Lasky, Scientific American Special Edition - A Matter of Time

Buttermilk Sky

Solitude

Touch my skin
but do not expect
my money in return.

I live for solitude
and cannot pay you.
Suppose you think it is fine?

But what do you think
when flowing waters
reach the pool of calm?

Why an endless struggle
to disappear from
the most satisfying moments?

Ghosts

The intimate fragrance of jasmine
passes only a reflection of days gone by.
The catwoman moves stealthily
through the abyss...
but this only exists
when ghosts remind her.
She seeks nothing, she seeks everything.
To design this woman transcends
complexity, and becomes timeless.

Sky Observations

The wind blows my hair across my face
as I sit in my very old, comfortable clothes.
Dinner has filled my stomach
and I chew silently on my toothpick.

The sun manages a slight glow
through the dark, fast moving clouds.
The smallest buds are on the tree in the yard
with the potential for cool moments when
the summer sun bears down its heat.

The red Chevy in the sideyard hasn't moved for days -
perhaps it will come alive with spring.
Covers come off of wicker chairs
and rockers come out from indoors.
My dog prolongs her stay outdoors
investigating movement of squirrels and birds.

Such a day touches ones tender feelings
with a gentle sky and its caress
only moments after a hard wind and blackness.

Nature is just as one's own life -
each day is very beautiful.
Ride with the melancholy gray,
learn from the occasional bleakness,
soak the azure in while
gathering the fleeting moments of the sun.

Your Smile

Across your face
crept a smile
meant only for me.
I take this moment
and etch it finely
in my memory.
Then times when I am very alone
it can float back to me.
My comfort in your absence.

Time - a scientific look

Time from a Science vantage point - from the Wikipedia:

Time is currently one of the few fundamental quantities. These are quantities which can not be defined via other quantities because there is nothing more fundamental known at present. Thus, similar to definition of other fundamental quantities (like space and mass), time is defined via measurement. Currently, the standard time interval (called conventional second, or simply second) is defined as 9 192 631 770 oscillations of a hyperfine transition in the 133caesium (Cs) atom.

This definition of time coupled to the current definition of space in physics makes our space-time to be Minkowski space-time - and thus makes special relativity absolutely correct simply by definition.

Prior to Albert Einstein's relativistic physics, time and space had been treated as distinct dimensions; Einstein linked time and space into spacetime. He said that time was basically what a clock reads; the clock can be any action or change, like the movement of the sun. Einstein showed that people traveling at different speeds will measure different times for events and different distances between objects, though these differences are minute unless one is traveling at a speed close to that of light. Many subatomic particles exist for only a fixed fraction of a second in a lab relatively at rest, but some that travel close to the speed of light can be measured to travel further and survive longer than expected (a muon is one example).

According to the special theory of relativity, in the high-speed particle's frame of reference, it exists for the same amount of time as usual, and the distance it travels in that time is what would be expected for that velocity. Relative to a frame of reference at rest, time seems to "slow down" for the particle. Relative to the high-speed particle, distances seems to shorten. Even in Newtonian terms time may be considered the fourth dimension of motion; but Einstein showed how both temporal and spatial dimensions can be altered (or "warped") by high-speed motion.
Einstein (The Meaning Of Relativity): "Two events taking place at the points A and B of a system K are simultaneous if they appear at the same instant when observed from the middle point, M, of the interval AB. Time is then defined as the ensemble of the indications of similar clocks, at rest relatively to K, which register the same simultaneously."

Time - a philosophical look

Time according to Philosophy - from the Wikipedia:

In 5th century BC Greece, Antiphon the Sophist wrote, in his chief work Truth, "Time is a thought or a measure, not a substance." This is similar to the later statement by Kant.

In ancient thought, Zeno's paradoxes challenged the conception of infinite divisibility, and eventually led to the development of calculus. Parmenides (of whom Zeno was a follower) believed that time, motion, and change were illusions, basing this on a rather interesting argument. More recently, McTaggart held a similar belief.

Many ancient philosophers wrote lengthy essays on time, believing it to be the essence around which life was based. A famous analogy was one comparing the time of life to the passing of sand through an hourglass. The sand at the top is the future, and, one tiny grain at a time, the future flows through the present into the past. The past ever expanding, the future ever decreasing, but the future grains being moulded into the past through the present. This was widely discussed in around the 3rd century CE.

The dharmic religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, have a concept of wheel of time, that regards time as cyclical and consisting of repeating ages.

The Judaeo-Christian concept, however, based on the Bible, is that time is not cyclical but linear, with a beginning, the act of creation by God, and an end, the eschaton. In the Christian view, the eschaton will happen when Christ returns to earth in the Second Coming to judge the living and the dead. This will be the consummation of the world and time. St Augustine's City of God was the first developed application of this concept to world history. The Christian view is that God and the supernatural world are outside time and exist in eternity.

Newton believed time and space form a container for events, which is as real as the objects it contains. In contrast, Leibniz believed that time and space are a conceptual apparatus describing the interrelations between events. These differences came to a head in the famous Leibniz-Clark Correspondence.

Leibniz and others thought of time as a fundamental part of an abstract conceptual framework, together with space and number, within which we sequence events, quantify their duration, and compare the motions of objects. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows," that objects "move through," or that is a "container" for events.

The bucket argument proved problematic for Leibniz, and his account fell into disfavour, at least amongst scientists, until the development of Mach's principle. Modern physics views the curvature of spacetime around an object as much a feature of that object as are its mass and volume.

Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, described time as an a priori notion that allows us (together with other a priori notions such as space) to comprehend sense experience. With Kant, neither space nor time are conceived as substances, but rather both are elements of a systematic framework necessarily structuring the experiences of any rational agent. This is similar to the outlook of the Sophist Antiphon. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantify how far apart events occur.

Schopenhauer, in the preface to his On the Will in Nature, stated that "Time is the condition of the possibility of succession." This is in accordance with Kant's understanding of time as a mental form in an observing subject.

Nietzsche, inspired by the concept of eternal return in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, argued that time possesses a circular characteristic. Postulating an infinite past, "all things" must have come to pass therein; the same for an infinite future.

In Existentialism, time is considered fundamental to the question of being, in particular by the philosopher Martin Heidegger.