Space-Time Continuum

Life Without Time

/ cigarman501 / 8 Comments

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man, alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.” ― Mitch Albom, The Timekeeper

I’m retired and time doesn’t mean as much as it used to.  Since retirement I have had trouble remembering what day of the week it is. Every day is a weekend. But since I’m celebrating another birthday time seems important today.

I should say, the LACK of time seems important. I can’t see the road ahead, but I know it is much shorter than the road behind. I’m not afraid of the dwindling “sands through the hourglass” but it does give me pause to ponder. Everyone does a bit of introspection and self-evaluation on their birthdays…don’t you?

There was a time when my personality resembled Alice’s White Rabbit, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” I was taught that “on time” was at least thirty minutes early. Now I find myself more in tune with the March Hare or Mad Hatter than the White Rabbit. I no longer desire to go anywhere that will dock me for being late.

 I should have an “unbirthday party” and invite the Hare and Hatter to join me. I just won’t tell them what time to have the tea and cake ready. “Just come whenever. I will piddle until you get here.” I will make sure the Hookah Smoking Caterpillar knows to arrive early and will make sure he knows to bring his “srooms.” “Whooo…are…You?” A seventy-two-year-old hippie who has no need for time.

Seventy-two. Boo Hoo. Considering the alternative, seventy-two aint bad.

If I’m not moving, I don’t feel like I’m seventy-two. The mirror says I’m seventy-two. My knees tell me I’m seventy-two. There are myriads of other indicators when I move about. If I must bend over or kneel, I contemplate how many activities I might complete before having to stand again.

Getting up in the morning is a ritual of assessment. “What is not working quite right today?”  I’m at a loss. Sometimes getting out of bed is akin to falling off a ten-foot ladder. I must have slept on my head; my neck is killing me. Other days I bounce out and fear I died during the night because nothing hurts.

“I Don’t Know How to Act My Age. I’ve Never Been This Old Before!” I saw the sentiment embroidered on a hat worn by a man a good twenty years my junior. Jackass! I can relate. How am I supposed to act and why do these other seventy-two-year-olds look so ancient?

A reframe from Jimmy Buffett’s “Nothing but a Breeze” hits me like a brick. “One day I’ll be an old gray grandpa. All the pretty girls will call me “sir!” Now, where they’re asking me how things are. Soon they’ll ask me how things were?” Unfortunately, Buffett’s one day and mine are in our rear-view mirrors. Like Buffett my hair has not only turned gray, but it has also turned loose. I should have started saving earlier for hair replacement.

Jimmy Buffett live singing Jesse Winchester’s “Nuthin’ But a Breeze”

I think I’ve got a cure for my birthday. I’m going feral and take Mitch Albom to heart. I’m ditching my watch and will tear up all my calendars. I will act like the birds, dogs, and deer…except I’ll wear clothing. I haven’t gone that far around the bend. Time will run out, but I don’t have to look at a clock or calendar and count off the minutes and days.

 If that plan doesn’t work, I’ll just sing another Buffett tune, “Trip Around the Sun.”  “Yes, I’ll make a resolution, that I’ll never make another one. Just enjoy this ride – on my trip around the sun. Just enjoy this ride – till it’s done.”

Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride “Trip Around the Sun”

Much to our detriment, man created time. I have a watch, a clock on my wall and on top of my bedside table so it can greet me in the morning and tell me to sleep tight as I say my “Now I lay me down to sleep.” My phone and computer tell me the time and the date. There is a calendar on my kitchen wall. The truth is inescapable, it is impossible to escape time and birthdays while above ground.

Time is a human construct and even the understanding of time has changed…over time. Just ask Einstein…well we can’t because Albert has transitioned to the great cosmic relativity after his last trip around the sun…maybe. I like to think death simply brings another reality that doesn’t involve time.

 “I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man floating down Canal. It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands, it always just says “now.” Now you may be thinking that I was had, but this watch is never wrong, and if I had trouble, the warranty said: Breathe in, breathe out, move on.”

Jimmy Buffett and Caroline Jones “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On” The song is about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and moving on. My birthday pales.

Between Mitch Albom, Alice, and her Wonderland, and Jimmy Buffett I’ll find an answer…or die trying.

With apologies to all the non-Buffett fans but I’m celebrating my latest trip around the sun! “Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me….”

Don Miller writes poorly at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0uOIommkv9nnhPm29GnLeOczmiq5eFTsr_nl-20jF2_0Bt_8fAOyIqkT0

His latest release is Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes: More Musings From a Mad Southerner. It may be purchased in paperback or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09GNZFXFT/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

Mojo, Blivits, and  the Space-Time Continuum

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

♬Oh, where or where has my Mojo gone, oh where, oh where can it be?♬

It’s early summer and the days are long, the sunlight abundant.  I am not suffering from SAD. I am not depressed.  If anything, I’m manic…something I never am.  Downright squirrely.

John Phillips just reminded me, “The Mississippi River runs like molasses in the summertime.”  I don’t live near the Mississippi, but I’ve been outside, and the humidity is sticking like molasses in the summertime and it is not July yet.

I shouldn’t be running around sweating like this looking for my metaphorical gris-gris bag while searching for my juju.  Another way of saying, I can’t get my poop together.    And if I were able, I probably couldn’t pick it up because my hands are sweating too much from the humidity.

What mojo I had has galloped over the horizon into the distant sunset I am still waiting to light up from the Saharan dust storm.  Clouds, clouds, clouds.

As you can tell, my thoughts are fragmented and muddled, dancing about like Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil.

I can’t get anything done.  My life is a nasty “blivit”, ten pounds of poo in a five-pound bag.  I flit from project to project while adding others, staring off into space, tapping my toes, contemplating, ruminating, and completing nothing.  COMPLETING!  I’m not even starting.

I sit knowing I should be doing something but doing nothing.  I should make it my goal to do nothing.  One can’t foul themselves with a “blivit” if you don’t touch it.

Some of you may think I’m speaking metaphorically or allegorically about irregularity…I am but it is more than a couple of failed bathroom trips although all my problems may center around constipation rather than the time-space continuum I am contemplating.  I just don’t know.

There are four storylines waiting to be finished, waiting for most of a year.  They aren’t finished because they suck largely.  A garden that needs extreme weeding and a yard that resembles an Amazon rain forest, a porch needing repainting, a home we’ve turned into a hoarder’s paradise…and today is my anniversary.  I have lost all control over my life, my yard, my mojo, and possibly my bodily functions, but I did not forget my anniversary…I think my bride did, but she recovered nicely.

And the virus…and the protests complete with looting, rioting, teargas, and downright nasty social media arguments.  I’m not going to wish my life away because there is no guarantee 2021 will be any better.  I just going to wish for a little movement…and soon.

Well, it is raining…dripping would be a better descriptor.  I see the sun trying to punch its way through the overcast. “Ole Sol” seems to be winning but the dripping gives me an out.  Instead of heading to weed my tomatoes, I sit writing this…This…whatever THIS is.

I have a theory.  Want to hear it?  You’re going to.

Writing is a way for me to face what is disturbing me.  The problem is I don’t know which disturbance has caused my mojo to run screaming into the day?  I have a plethora of disturbances.

The way my thoughts bounce around something must have happened to the time-space continuum.  There must be a rift in time.

In my head, a calm Picard orders, “Make it so, Number One,” while Commander Scott, the Scottish engineer implores, “But Captain, the engines won’t take anymore.”  In the background, I hear Benjamin Sisko’s father saying, “The soufflé will either rise or it won’t, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

I know, I just combined tall he Star Treks series, and unfortunately, in my condition, the Sisko quote makes perfect sense.  I told you; time and space are funky as is my colon…I mean my brain.

There must be some magic charm, some talisman, some spell that will make my mojo come back.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong venue.  Time to appropriate someone else’s culture.  Surely there is a wise, old, New Orleans, Hoodoo priestess willing to cast good luck juju upon this humble soul.  What do you mean, Voodoo dolls aren’t used in Voodoo?

Despite the facts, I feel I must have a hat pin jammed deeply into my head…or parts south.

I can’t seem to concentrate on any one thing for any period of time if that period of time is longer than seconds.  I do a little research, a little writing, a little reading, pop up to watch a bit of an episode of The Kitchen, oh wow, grilled fish tacos, a little checking of social media, walk to the refrigerator, open and close the door without retrieving anything, head down to the garden, forget why I went down there, then out to the yard and find only ten minutes have passed despite my head telling me it has been hours.  IT IS a run-on sentence, and it fits perfectly with the way my brain and colon are not working right now.

Okay, so Voodoo is out.  Maybe my mojo IS lost in the space-time continuum.  Captain Kirk, lost between dimensions in The Tholian Web, came back.  Data died in one movie only to return in another series.  Spock died in one movie and came back in another, he even lost and re-acquired his brain in the same episode, Spock’s Brain.  So maybe my mojo will return!  More than likely it will be my “chickens coming home to roost” first…or maybe I should just eat more fiber.

John Phillips sings Mississippi on YouTube.

According to Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,

A gris-gris bag is a Voodoo amulet originating in Africa which is believed to protect the wearer from evil or bring luck. It consists of a small cloth bag, usually inscribed with verses from an African ancestor containing a ritual number of small objects, worn on the person.

JuJu is a spiritual belief system incorporating objects, such as amulets, and spells used in religious practice, as part of witchcraft in West Africa especially the people of Nigeria.

Hoodoo is a traditional African-American Spirituality created by enslaved African-Americans in the New World. It is specific to the distinct African-American lineage in North America. Hoodoo is the product of enslaved people and was a rebellion against absolute mental and spiritual domination by Europeans. Also known as Lowcountry Voodoo in the Gullah Lowcountry of South Carolina, Hoodoo is an amalgamation of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs that were held in secret away from White slaveholders. In some cases, Hoodoo was accompanied by Catholicism or Christianity.

Don Miller writes in different genres when not constipated and his author’s page may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1-nlM-kc0EFF7g5-W4Vtkeary-O49oUk3PF_i7Z615YELZdIoxgnvCezk

The image is from Quora.com