The Times are A'changin'

I am sitting in Amarillo, Texas now, having flown from Brussels yesterday, where it is nearly 18:00, or 6:00 pm, and here it is 10:00 in the morning.

Travel across time zones is a curious phenomenon because we take ourselves along with the time change, though those that we left behind, stay behind with that "other" time and other place. When I am here in Texas or New Mexico, I am not just here physically and mentally, but also temporally.

For my daughter, who is not quite old enough to really grasp the time change, yesterday was just a really long day, being more like 31 hours, rather than 24 hours, which brings up the whole issue of perspective of time. I just told her, "Please give Papa fifteen more minutes and we'll go to the store."

"Whoaah! (her interjection of choice)," she said, "That's a long time."

"For you it is," I replied, fatherly.

So, here I am 7 hours "behind" Belgium, where a part of my life continues on, but a fourth of a day ahead of me.

People who might be reading my blog there, then, are winding up the day, while if you read this post in Texas as soon as I post it, your day is just beginning. The former might make a connection from today's events, while the latter might see something later today and say, "hey, that's odd, I just read about that in this weird guy's blog..." Or, something like that.

When I go to India next month, I will be in a time zone three and a half hours ahead of Belgium and ten and a half hours ahead of Texas. If I post something there, I will be nearly one half of the 24-hour day different. Makes sense, will be nearly exactly half way around the world. So, in essence, I will be living three lives at once, thinking simultaneously about my life here, my life in Belgium, and my life in India, or thinking about my past, present, and future all at the same time.

Or, is it? Can we think simultaneously about two things? We cannot be physically in the same place, so can we also not be mentally in the same place?

This morning, here in Texas that is, I went for a mile swim in the old pool I used to swim in twenty-five years ago. It is the same pool, or...is it?

Stephen Dedalus thinks about I, I and I (the Stephen of the past, present and future) as he walks along the beach in the Proteus chapter of Ulysses. Proteus, as you may know, is the god that Odysseus must hold onto as Proteus furiously changes shapes, in order to get an answer from the protean deity when he finally stops changing.

But, can we hold onto a memory, one stuck in time, one that is so dramatic, such as where we were when the Space Shuttle exploded, or the Twin Towers fell, or when man first walked on the moon?

Can we stop time to remember something? Do we have the leisure to do so? Or, are we always moving on to the next moment.

People to see, places to go.

Going to the store now, my fifteen minutes are up.