The concepts of bending time and space seem far-fetched but fascinating; intriguing, but beyond the ability of my mind to comprehend. The origin and the end of time are beyond my grasp, too, but my feeble intellect continues pushing me to attempt to understand the mysteries embedded in the ideas. Despite the extreme unlikelihood that I will ever get plausible, comprehensible answers to my questions about time and space, I remain deeply curious about such matters. Yet my curiosity apparently is insufficient to drive me to delve deeply into learning physics, where—if they exist—there may be answers. I gave up on mathematics and physics before I finished high school; maybe even earlier. Unlike other school subjects, which were easy for me to grasp, those two presented challenges I was either unable or unwilling to meet. In recent years, my interest in them has grown considerably. But not enough to spur me to invest the time, energy, and commitment to revisit them with the intensity of a student truly hungry for knowledge. I justified my failure to make the necessary investments by saying to myself, “it’s too late, now…if only I had developed my interests much earlier…” That justification has kept me from exploring the subjects for years and years. “If only” is an over-used excuse, just an explanation used in place of acknowledging laziness.
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In connection with my fascination with time, deep in the clutches of a recent unforgiving night, I had an epiphany about time’s origin. Unfortunately, the night’s absence of mercy prevented me from capturing that revelation in memory. I wonder whether that epiphany, if examined in the light of day, would retain its relevance? Or would it dissolve into a flimsy interpretation of a theory based on magical thinking? I am inclined to believe it would wither under the glaring light of intense examination; like so many of my “epiphanies” usually do.
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The roof of the house is white with frost. Yesterday, the red berries on the plants outside my window were green, I think. Bright sunlight is intensifying the kaleidoscope of colors in the changing leaves. Acorns and leaf litter usher in the first real evidence of the coming winter. Every day, the scene in the forest surrounding the house changes enough to be noticeable. Before long, filtered light will replace the dense darkness of the forest floor. A friend posted a photograph on Facebook, showing a pile of acorns on a two-square-foot space on his lawn. He says this is a “mast year” for acorns. According to an AI-created explanation, “A mast year is an irregular, synchronized event where a population of trees produces an unusually large crop of nuts and seeds, known as ‘mast.‘” Mast is the the fruit of forest trees and shrubs; a mast year helps ensure adequate food for wildlife and enough seeds to replenish forest vegetation. If there is a correlation between a mast year and the intensity of winter weather, I suspect this winter may be an especially brutal one.
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Last night, I had been engaged in a long, stressful dream when I woke in a pool of cold sweat (again). The dream was bizarre in many ways; some elements I remember:
- I checked in to a motel and left, then later realized I did not know the name or location of the place.
- I walked for miles, looking for the location of a place I thought I knew, finally realizing I was looking for a place in Dallas, but was attempting to follow a route I remembered from Corpus Christi.
- I tried to text for an uber, but the bulky cell phone I was using did not have the right plug-in.
- Two men who asked me for a ride to their hotel did not have an address for it, but we drove around north Dallas looking for it for a long time before they mentioned the hotel was in downtown Dallas, 20-odd miles south.
- While looking for a restroom, I went inside a crowded Mexican restaurant, where a homeless woman stopped me and asked me to lend her $1.
- The road I thought would take me onto a freeway ramp took me, instead, to a railroad track on a sweeping overpass built on wooden stilts.
This latest episode of night-sweats will be the subject of an inquiry I will make to my oncologist…to learn whether there may be something of concern I need to address.
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If the universe consists of an enormous globe, within which billions of galaxies exist, what is beyond its outer limits? If the universe is limitless, there is no beginning and no end to it; an idea that is impossible for me to grasp. But, then, so is the concept of “something” external to the monstrous globe of a limited universe. Prior to the “big bang,” how big (or small) was the “thing” that exploded? What was it that blew up? Did anything exist outside that “thing?” If “nothing” surrounded that “big bang,” how far out did/does “nothing” extend? I recently read that scientists (somewhere or other) have evidence that light-speed can be (and in fact has been) exceeded, suggesting that “warp speed” may really be a thing and that time travel could, theoretically, be feasible without breaking the laws of physics (which is punishable by hefty fines and eternal incarceration in a galaxy far, far away).
