Sunday, September 12, 2010
A theory
My relationship with time is a one-sided affair. It has no awareness of
me and I think about it constantly. Perhaps time infatuation is an
identified disorder. It is really a matter of where we look for
meaning. I find meaning in time.
Last Sunday's Los Angeles Times Book Review section offered, on the same page, an interview with historian Sean Wilentz on his new book,
Bob Dylan in America, and a review of The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, here.
The page featured a quote from Wilentz about Dylan, "He had this sensibility that the past wasn't the past, that the past was the present." He further said of Dylan's early days in New York, "He was living in this world where Edgar Allan Poe was living around the corner...a phantasmagoria of American history." Times reporter Charles Taylor referred to Dylan's CD of holiday music
, Christmas in the Heart, as Dylan's love letter to the holiday music that was part of the American popular music he grew up hearing.
When Dylan returned to the Newport Folk Festival in 2002, where his
electric debut elicited boos and jeers in 1965, Wilentz said, "There
were ghosts all over the place. You could feel them." Wilentz told how
he sensed the ghosts take form, many of the pivotal musicians from the
American tradition, "...they were all kind of assuming shape again."
My interpretation of this information is that others, including a respected historian who teaches at Princeton, find that the past lives in and through us. We bring it forth in our thoughts, in works we create. It is not a dead thing, immobile in some unreachable long-ago, but alive, its influences at work on us through memories, either individually or collectively.
In his review, Michael Moorcock said that the Hawking-Mlodinow book suggests that physics and metaphysics are growing closer. Robert Oppenheimer is said to have proposed that physics and poetry were indistinguishable.
Moorcock described, "In an environment that includes black holes, super black holes, dark matter, dark energy, string theory, M-theory, alternate pasts and alternate futures, we can no longer assume there is one universe or even a set of universes with a single group of natural laws applicable to everything from the domain of atoms to that of astronomy.
"Models of the universe are changing radically. We now live in a world in which many physicists have come to believe there are not merely three dimensions (plus time) but 10 or possibly 11.
"Even laws we have taken for granted, like those relating to the speed of light, might be at odds in different realms of a near-infinite set of universes."
Those review excerpts and the remainder of the article suggest to me that anything is possible.
What I believe is that, if we pay attention and look inward frequently, we learn to identify our truths. They don't need educated, scientific validation to be true for us, but it does take some of the lunatic self-labeling away to have credible sources appear to think along similar lines. What I feel, what I experience, is the fluid quality of time (yes, I HAVE mentioned this before) but also the real yet intangible way that what has gone before is not gone.
Last Sunday's Los Angeles Times Book Review section offered, on the same page, an interview with historian Sean Wilentz on his new book,
Bob Dylan in America, and a review of The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, here.The page featured a quote from Wilentz about Dylan, "He had this sensibility that the past wasn't the past, that the past was the present." He further said of Dylan's early days in New York, "He was living in this world where Edgar Allan Poe was living around the corner...a phantasmagoria of American history." Times reporter Charles Taylor referred to Dylan's CD of holiday music
, Christmas in the Heart, as Dylan's love letter to the holiday music that was part of the American popular music he grew up hearing. |
| A time slip. |
My interpretation of this information is that others, including a respected historian who teaches at Princeton, find that the past lives in and through us. We bring it forth in our thoughts, in works we create. It is not a dead thing, immobile in some unreachable long-ago, but alive, its influences at work on us through memories, either individually or collectively.
In his review, Michael Moorcock said that the Hawking-Mlodinow book suggests that physics and metaphysics are growing closer. Robert Oppenheimer is said to have proposed that physics and poetry were indistinguishable.
Moorcock described, "In an environment that includes black holes, super black holes, dark matter, dark energy, string theory, M-theory, alternate pasts and alternate futures, we can no longer assume there is one universe or even a set of universes with a single group of natural laws applicable to everything from the domain of atoms to that of astronomy.
"Models of the universe are changing radically. We now live in a world in which many physicists have come to believe there are not merely three dimensions (plus time) but 10 or possibly 11.
"Even laws we have taken for granted, like those relating to the speed of light, might be at odds in different realms of a near-infinite set of universes."
Those review excerpts and the remainder of the article suggest to me that anything is possible.
What I believe is that, if we pay attention and look inward frequently, we learn to identify our truths. They don't need educated, scientific validation to be true for us, but it does take some of the lunatic self-labeling away to have credible sources appear to think along similar lines. What I feel, what I experience, is the fluid quality of time (yes, I HAVE mentioned this before) but also the real yet intangible way that what has gone before is not gone.
10 comments:
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RachelVB said...
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I've never understood why some people think ghost don't exists ... many live even within ourselves do they not?
Something about this post is eerie to me, unknown. It can be hard to face your truths, even when you know they are there in whatever dimension they hover in. Truths and ghosts. I wonder if they reside in the same places?
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September 13, 2010 at 5:36 AM
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Marylinn Kelly said...
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Rachel - My thinking has always been that more ghosts live within than
without, though sometimes we may project them to the point of sitting
down, having a conversation.
Eerie and unknown...I subscribe to the "It's all a mystery" theory and, if there are no answers, it makes my not having any feel less defective. And maybe I draw a line between reality and truths...reality can give you a rash, while truths are more like a balm.
Likely, it all resides in the same places.
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September 13, 2010 at 8:37 AM
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RachelVB said...
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Yes, truths are more soothing. They are usually discovered after a burn. Reality seems to be the burn itself.
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September 13, 2010 at 8:42 AM
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Radish King said...
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Marylinn, ah yes, right down my alley. The Tearful Dishwasher posted on
this on my blog this morning. Einstein said time wasn't linear and I
have no reason not to believe him. I think of my passage through this
life as passage through a series of portals wormholes if you will.
Present and parallel universes coinciding and sometimes one can enter
the right portal that takes us to a parallel universe. Perhaps this is
where Rachel's ghosts come from.
And déjà vu and presque vu and jamais vu and any number of fascinations of the human mind.
Perhaps artists and madmen and well trained to enter and pass through these portals and observe though they don't always know it.
xoR
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September 13, 2010 at 12:15 PM
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Marylinn Kelly said...
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Rachel - Eww, image, the cockroach in the whipped cream. (and not whipped topping)
Rebecca - Being here and there at the same time...I wonder if I volunteered for this or was I screened and recruited, unbeknownst. It is good to have an assignment for which one is suited. Happily, they didn't tell us not to talk about it.
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September 13, 2010 at 5:21 PM
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RachelVB said...
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I like the idea of being summoned in the womb. It does feel very much
like a purpose. I, too, love being suited for the assignment. I wonder
if this is how other people feel when they've found their passions in
life?
very eew. Cockroaches give me the heebie-jeebies. But not sure why. They survive most assassination attempts and should be given a little credit at least.
I'm not sure where my ghosts come from. Sometimes they feel too deep to even be mine. As a little girl I used to imagine I was Judy Garland in a past life - you wanna talk about ghosts?! =)
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September 14, 2010 at 4:02 AM
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Marylinn Kelly said...
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Rachel - I believe we end up carrying things that don't belong to us.
Maybe they come from other incarnations, maybe they were foisted upon us
growing up..."here, take this" and in time we forget that it isn't
ours. I think shame is a good example...plenty of this to go around.
Being suited for the assignment is essential. What a wretched First Lady I would make, what a sub-par bookkeeper (I have proof), what an impatient sixth-grade teacher. How glad I am not to have been called for any of those gigs.
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September 14, 2010 at 2:11 PM
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grrl + dog said...
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I smirk to read these kinds of things.
What indidginous folk have known and lived for thousands of yers is news to us.
Us - somewhere along the line we lost our spirit.No wonder our Australian aborginies are perplexed by us.
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September 14, 2010 at 4:15 PM
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Robert the Skeptic said...
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Though I have not read Hawking's book yet, I have some familiarity with
the concepts. We have waded into an ocean of knowledge literally unknown
to previous generations. And though it is all very exciting, much is
still unknown.
Yes, this information increases possibilities, but what is most likely "probable" to be reality?
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September 16, 2010 at 9:28 AM
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Marylinn Kelly said...
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Denise - For me, life is mystery - and that's the good part. The
Hawking book, for example, takes another step toward...do we even know
what, other than things are much, much bigger than we thought and much
less predictable, with current information. All of which goes in
support of, I believe, living a life of the spirit, for being open,
period. For being open.
Robert - I have Hawking's book in hand and am going to start reading it this afternoon. Skimming through, it looks as though we may have some revisions to make in our thinking on such matters. At least we can consider revisions. And as to what may be probable, I think your question mark says it for us. I am a great fan of possibility.
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September 16, 2010 at 1:55 PM
4 comments:
I think we have the same disorder regarding 'time.' Reality is so flexible. The idea of dimensions fascinates me. Physicists ponder the possibility that dimensions invaginate, creating even more dimensions than we have imagined.
Kass - IS it a disorder or do we have it right? Always a question. Don't you feel that things in general, ourselves included, are capable of being much more flexible than is commonly thought? And thank you for a new-to-me word, invaginate. I really believe the possibilities are without limit(or wish them to be). xo
This discussion reminded me of the film "Mrs Dalloway" that I watched the other day.Virginia Woolf, through her characters and their experiences, introduces the idea of the 'living present' where present and past overlays to such an extent in our minds that we often live in a different time frame and past experiences reply in our minds like a private video recorder. I also strongly agree with the idea that we are more shaped by our inner life - our thoughts, our decisions, our inner chatter, than any external chronological events, and that the two are inseparable in shaping our future! From a new but future reader. Thanks, Marylinn.
Linda - So good to see you here, thank you. I picture us, gathering like a harvest all that we've seen, experienced, heard about, read, everything, then sifting through it to arrive at some personal, unique truth - which may have validity beyond us - and, in that, it is easy to see time becoming other than what we've been told. It may be too late in the day for me to make sense. But we can always return to the subject in the future. And I've not seen "Mrs. Dalloway," so I thank you for telling me about that. xo
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