Last night’s dinner provided a rare opportunity for social engagement for me. I am advised by medical pros to avoid much contact with people, considering risks to my immune system. But the evening turned into more than a simple social event. It put on display the possibilities of maintaining and even strengthening family ties after difficult circumstances could otherwise have caused those ties to fray or come undone. Dinner was hosted at mi novia’s ex-husband’s house, with whom she maintains cordial, friendly ties. Visiting from out of state, their daughter provided captivating humor, making everyone feel comfortable. My late wife’s sister, now a very close friend of mi novia‘s and a friend of mi novia‘s ex-husband (and, naturally, still a good friend of mine), joined the gathering. And, of course, mi novia and I were there. The interactions between all of us were more than communications between friends. They were the words and facial expressions and welcoming openness between family members. The atmosphere was one in which everyone seemed to fit together quite well…like a strangely abstract but immensely appealing jigsaw puzzle. I would call it an intriguing sociological study in overcoming frictions and unavoidable life-span events. But it was much more than that.
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The morning split into fragments, beginning at 3 when I got up to pee. I decided to go back to bed then, rather than start the day. An hour later, I woke again, but was not ready to abandon sleep, so I returned to the comfort of unconsciousness. Yet an hour later, it happened again; again, I decided to get some more sleep. At 7:30, I woke, got up, and put on my morning attired…only to return to bed to get a few more minutes of sleep, at the urging of mi novia. Finally, at 9:30, I woke again, but stayed in bed until 10:30 before I forced myself to get out of bed. Each of those fragments of morning provided me with either dreams or delusions, every one different. I cannot decide, with any certainty, whether these different mental visions offer evidence of a vivid imagination or psychoses spinning out of control.
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In some fashion, Time (as a noun) is defined as involving a sequential relationship between any event to any other event. None of the roughly three dozen generally accepted definitions of Time involve the possibility that Time has mass. The idea—that the concept we rely on to fuel our clocks—is dismissed as ludicrous, if it is acknowledged at all. The reason for treating Time as a mass-less concept is that we do not properly define mass. We assume mass exists only in “things” we can see or cause to be seen. But there is evidence that Time is recognized by some astute physicists as having mass. For example, the phrase “Time is money” implies that Time must have mass, if indeed it is equivalent to money, which virtually everyone would agree has mass. If you will agree that “yesterday” refers to much more than a single day, that is, an amount of time far greater than “today,” I hope you will acknowledge that “yesterday” has far more mass than “today.” If you will not give me that, then surely you will admit that the center of a tree trunk is older than the surrounding bark, which is why the core of a tree is heavier than its protective shell. I then challenge you (whoever you are) to consider the weight and mass of a tree trunk in the context of Time. If you can wrap your head around that correlation, your chances of understanding the true nature of Time are greater today than yesterday.
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The past cannot be cured.
Elizabeth I
