Catalogue of the Mundane #3, Time

Time has become linear. In earlier incarnations of humanity, time was thought to be circular in nature. Personally, I think it’s a spiral—twisting downward or upward, depending on individual disposition.

We live and die and others come. This much is known. Still, what made us unique from the animals was our ability to conceive an existence that transcends death, be it Valhalla or Heaven or the Elysian Fields. We perceive time marching on, with or without our intervention and permission, and know it will continue long after our passing. Faith is nice, if you have it, because no one really wants to go into the All and Everything naked and alone. With faith, you can sleep at night knowing there is something beyond your own time alive when there really isn’t squat. Sorry.

The first “clock” didn’t measure time at all. I’ll let you guess what it measured.

When the Sun goes into decline on the western horizon, we look at it due to the gravitational pull on the water of our bodies. Daily, the Sun pulls the ocean into time-delayed swells of gravitational pull, and the earth bulges outward toward our life-giving star. The same thing happens to us, since we’re made of so much water—the Sun pulls upon our bodies in a subtle play of gravity. Time is not immune to gravity, so it can swell and recede too, depending on the forces at play. When we look at sunsets, we’re stealing time that is expanded and bulged ever-so-slightly. This is the best moment for making love.

Head West! Time is not constant. At different altitudes, speeds and emotional states, time can vary quite a bit. A person traveling against the rotation of the earth ages much faster than a person traveling with the rotation of the earth. This is why many airplane pilots, who routinely travel west, live much longer lives.

The water clock of ancient Babylon, perhaps our first time-keeping device, was basically a bowl with a hole in it. As water drained into another bowl below, marked with lines or ridges to measure time’s passage, you could tell if it had been nearly a gallon since you last checked. A gallon! Oh, if only we could control time in such a manner… which is what an ancient slave by the name of Baaldar did in service to his provincial king. By always keeping the palace’s water in the upper bowl low, the water had less pressure and would flow more slowly into the second bowl. Thus Baaldar is credited for keeping the province “untouched by time” as one historian put it, where people lived beyond four or five hundred years of age, and a day could last many weeks.

When did humanity decide how long a second would last? In 1206 A.C.E., during the international summit on time, weights and measures. The meeting took place in what is now known as Ceuta, Spain—on the tip of the African Continent. In the end, the second was determined by how long it took the average heart to beat. Since it was in the summer, the attendees’ heart rate was a bit high to compensate for the heat. Just imagine: If the summit had taken place in winter, a second would be one and a half times as long as it is now.

Time is slowing down. Due to the expansion of the universe, a current hour is about ten seconds longer than an hour 1,000 years ago. You might not think this is a big deal, but once the universe reaches its fullest size and contraction begins, then time will run backward and you’ll think it’s a pretty big deal. Why? Because you’ll have to live your life over again, only in reverse.

An hourglass is the worst possible measurement of time. Since tied to gravity, it is highly unreliable. An hourglass on a high mountain will take much longer to run out of sand than one at sea level. Yet hourglasses remained popular for a very long time and are still in use today. The very first watch was not worn on the wrist, but was an hourglass suspended from the neck.

The elephant clock, a wonderfully complex and accurate device invented by Al-Jazari, was both beautiful and complex. About the size of a small car, these clocks were highly decorated in Hindu fashion, and boasted a rider on top of the gold-bangled elephant. Basically, it used water in much the same manner as the water clock, only in reverse. When a bowl with a hole in it (hidden inside of the elephant’s body) filled with water, it would sink and cause an armature to maneuver the elephant’s little rider to bang a drum to indicate an hour. The movement of the rider’s arm would reset the bowl to slowly start filling again. If things had gone a little different, we’d probably all use elephant clocks today. However, after the many deaths that occurred in trying to make one small enough to wear on the wrist or about the neck, it was given up for the simple candle clock.

Mark a candle and as it burns you can note how long it has been by studying the highest mark. The first alarm clock was a nail stuck into the bottom of a candle that was then placed on a metal or ceramic tray. When the candle burned all the way down, the nail would tip over and strike the tray with a little “tink” sound. Good morning! So much better than the terrible “whah whah whah” of our current digital alarms. Plus, just try to use the “snooze” function on a candle clock.

The inventor of the “snooze” button, a lazy but resourceful engineer at Westinghouse Electric, was named Walter Dunlop and he is worse than Hitler. In 1952, he made a snooze button for his personal clock at home. When discovered by his manager, who had come to see why Dunlop was again late for work, the snooze button came into play at the national level. It is estimated that the snooze button is the worst invention by mankind, resulting in a loss of 490 billion man-hours of labor, consciousness and lovemaking to date.

A man-hour is two minutes shorter than a woman-hour.

We die of time. It accumulates in our very bones. That is why it is appropriate to say, on your deathbed, that you are “Too full of days” right before you croak. If you die violently or by accident or disease, it’s still time that gets you. Time is just not working to your advantage. That’s where we get the notion of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” etc.

Many souls are born out of time. Meaning, they should have been born in another era but, due to some cosmic fuck up, are born when they are. This can lead to a life-long feeling of disconnect with current life, mental health issues, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Time is not on anyone’s side. Actually, time is against us all.

If you really believe that life can be measured in little ticks and clumps, seconds to hours to years, then you’re a perfect tool in the mass hallucination that is our current reality. Once the notion of time and gravity are eradicated, we will once again live forever and be able to fly, just as we did 17,000 years ago. What happened? We started to measure time, which cannot be measured, and slowly closed off our former reality which was unbound by measurement or physics or Newtonian Laws.

The time is always right… for anything and everything.