Image by Almos Jaschick
Today is one of those when I can only attend to bits of information, short sequences of writing, a paragraph maybe, while my eyes are drawn to ivy leaves moved by the breeze, a blackbird family feasting on apples left for them, a pair of woodpigeons landing and swaying in the branches of the huge beech at the top of my garden. Again and again I engage in pockets of attention beyond the window and shake off focus, ironically, in order to re-find the focus towards a coherent little blog post. A sudden rainfall is followed by the sun spinning through marbled clouds, while the heavenly voice of Kiri Te Kanawa streams through sound boxes linked to my computer. Eventually, my eyes return to the words I’m assembling here about the mystery of time, also relating to the emerging parallel worlds featuring in my two, coming to three, imaginative novels, where intentions create connections – from invisible realms beyond space and time.
Check out this and similar posts on YouTube, ha, ha, a few speculations. I haven’t been there for a long while. Don’t get lost.
‘The distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, although a convincing one …’ is what Einstein wrote in 2007 in a letter to friends. Time, he showed, has no universal constant and is relative. His famous equation E = mc2 – energy equals mass times the speed of light squared – had enormous implications, technologically, as well as socially.
This valued theory seems, at present, incompatible with the Quantum Physics that apply to tiny things. The chase for a unifying theory that includes quantum gravity is on. Moreover, physicists puzzle over the unseen pulling and pushing forces in our universe that elude detection.
We perceive time as proceeding steadily forward, although the laws of physics allow for time to equally run backwards. When it comes to our subjective inner experience we easily accept time as non-linear and relative. In therapy work, for example, a shift in attitude towards a person in one’s past can change a generational pattern.
We define time, create time, record it, hoard it, take it apart and re-frame it into fresh representations and stories. Stepping from one reality into another without losing coherence of mind is the province of individual adventurers of consciousness. Some artists like to dwell in liminal spaces where time shrinks and expands, like the twisting passage between one dream and another. Many devote their life to the re-framing of events in time. Imagine for a moment where we would be without people who create novel perspectives on entrenched realities. To call such expressions mere fantasy demeans the symbolic understanding found in the vast dimensions of the psyche.
Try and compare the creation of our cosmos with the conception, cell divisions and the birth of a human infant. The procreations and expanding consciousness of humans make for multitudes, while each of us inhabits our own self-constructed world. A psychic universe held together, it seems, by forces not unlike the unseen tides our visible galaxies swim in, the ocean of dark matter and energy that exists symbiotically within us.
Dark matter is assumed to collide with oxygen and hydrogen nuclei in our body, speculated to happen at the rate of up to 100 000 times a year. There, you may be hit right now. To my knowledge, no idea has been proposed as to what might be sparked or exchanged in these collisions.
In any case, at this, another year’s ending, quite a few of us spark flames and kindle candles in dark nights to celebrate the cosmic dance, the birth of light.
I’m wishing you, my readers, wherever you are, a time of peace and reflection.
* * *
From Little Gidding by T. S Elliot …
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of completed simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Course of Mirrors 
” You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! –
powers and people-
and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.
I have faith in nights.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
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A wonderful contribution to this theme, thank you Joe ☼
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Just this past week (or was it next week?) I was walking by a local poetry post, and in the plastic box was Rilke’s poem. But it was raining out, and while I could see the title, I could not make out much else, but I saw his name. I looked the poem up when I got home. Wherever we are, whenever we are, life is both stranger and simpler than we have yet imagined, though Blake and Rilke seem to have had a glimpse.
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Admirable presentation, feels almost like a theory of everything all wrapped up in reflective thought!
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Oh I wish 🙂
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Hi! Ashen
“The mystery of time” a black hole in itself.
Given your constant straying from attention caused by the return of last year’s blackbirds and the strobe weather pattern, quite a grand effort.
My very best to you for a period of family, friends and good cheer.B
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Thank you B.
Sending you and yours across the waves many blessings and joy.
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Pic and excerpt are tremendous. Thanks for that 🙂
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I’m pleased you like the post, Jane. The image by Almos Jaschick comes from illustrations to Childe John by Alexander Petöfi, the Hungarian Magyar poet.
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The style is very similar to Russian illustrations. For me, that is the quintessential storybook style.
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Endlessly fascinating subject of course – I have to say I rather like the idea of being bombarded by Dark Matter it makes me feel mysterious! Mind you I like the idea of Dark Matter anyway.
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I too like the idea, Diane. We may well be riddled with holes through which the spirit blows.
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A wonder-ful analogy of the cosmos to the embryo Ashen thank you. We’re so conditioned to think of time as linear whereas if we ‘saw’ it as circular, this would be less limiting and would embrace much more. Our dream worlds are testament to this.
A blessed Christmas season to you … and the best of creative ongoing writing in 2016.
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Warmly received wishes, thank you. There’s good hope a launch of CoM will happen next year. I sense more transforming going on in our dreams than in press-recorded life.
May blessings drop into that still point. In the UK it has been the longest night. Best wishes for your family.
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nice, I will have to return to this! 🙂
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I have a theory that black holes are the other side of white holes, and are the true creators of unending universes.
Every blessing for all time xx
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Cool, Viv. An ongoing seesaw process of expanding consciousness.
I find David Bohm’s ideas about the implicate order interesting: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Bohm
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The sun spinning through marbled clouds…ahhh bliss for the mind and senses. Thank you sweetie. I’m wildly behind in my friends blogs and am trying to catch up today while the broadband lasts and gems like this are like silver dew on grass. 😀
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🙂 thanks, Sophie.
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Happy New Year sweetie! 😀 xx
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Same to you, Sophie …
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Wonderful and thought provoking post. My fantasy imagination loves this stuff. 🙂
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Thanks D. 🙂
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What an extraordinary journey you’ve taken me on, loved this, Ashen, from the lyrical description to your journey into science. And thank you for the Elliot, you remind me to read more of him. I hope you have a lovely festive 2020. This post seems to fit the mood of this year so well.
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Thanks Cath. Such fun when you dip into my archives and find posts I’ve forgotten about 🙂
Lovely festive days for you and yours, too.
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