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INTRODUCTION
I
still remember the day when I was told that the big clock in our house did more
than make pleasant sounds—sixty ticks made up a minute, sixty minutes an hour,
and twelve hours a day or a night. When I learned that people all over the
world timed their daily activities by the same clock, time became my invisible
companion. Our car would stop at an intersection and I would wonder whether
time ran ahead of us, and if so, where shall we catch up with it; or why would
the clock move so slowly when I had to wait for someone, and hours slipped by
unnoticed when I was busy. My great-uncle's family lived by clocks set an hour
earlier than standard time, which struck me like the boldest proclamation of
independence of the world outside their house. Later I worried why the
space-time continuum failed to make sense to me, as if the dash between them
skipped over something essential to time.
By
profession I am a visual artist. In 1970 I was building interactive
environments and drawing up projects I hoped to build in the future. In one
project I explored the experiences of earth, water, fire, and air, and when in
1975 the illustrated booklet Utility
for the Soul, was
published by Didymus Press in San Francisco, I
wondered whether the experience of time could be investigated in a similar
manner.
The
idea rooted in the fleeting confusion, which occurs when one of two trains
parked parallel in a station starts moving, and a passenger sitting inside is
not sure which of the two trains is in motion. In order to recreate the effect,
I needed two movements to take place parallel to each other, one visual, the
other moving the visitor. By changing the direction and speed between them, I
expected to evoke the sensations of being rushed or held back, moving in or out
of synchrony with the world, or standing still while being in motion: create
situations wherein duration—the experience of time—would be palpable. Sketches
of several installations convinced me that I will never see such complex
machinery built, and described the projected experiences instead.
To
my surprise, the imagined mechanical installations yielded seven distinct
perceptions of time. I have outlined them in The Physics of Metaphysics: Personal Musings, the article published in "The Journal of
Mind and Behavior," Winter 1998, Volume 19, Number 1, pages 65-90.
Pages
85, 87, 88 (revised)—
"(1)
There is a time when the past and the future part and the present stops
fleeting. It happens when I become other than myself—say, a pigeon strutting,
straining to rise; or a drop of water, me swelling as the drop swells, rolling
over as it does, and while hanging upside down, learning what every drop of
water already knows. In this frame of mind only a myriad of different
appearances disguise the sameness in one and all. In the here and now changes
take place under the skin, like hot and cold, only "before" and "after" to mark
the transition from one state to the other. By becoming other, I take measure
of my self: in the absolute now the world is a mirror held up to me, and I am a
mirror to all.
(2)
Time flows like a river when the world shatters into separate things, all
carried by time from the past into the future in a steady progression of
changes. In this time frame, time and change conspire, rendering every one
thing separately mutable. If I stand still, oppressive changes pile up around
me. If I resist the onslaught, the fight is upstream all the way, the effort
futile. And if I drift along, the undertows pull me under. In linear time only
memories and dreams are reliable.
(3)
And there comes a time when time seems less imposing, the changes less
intrusive. From the safety of my niche I take action, and using time as a
commodity free for all, like water or air, I start rearranging things,
introducing changes that might improve my lot; the availability of time giving
me a grip on change itself. In this mind-set days are a string of right and
wrong actions, every intentional deed a black or red entry in the balance sheet
of gains and losses. The future itself is but one other event-in-the-making,
the present only a means of getting there.
(4)
Ever so often the futility of human arrangements shocks me into a standstill.
In this state nothing makes sense anymore: what's the rush, where to? What's
the fuss and bustle all about? In the end, what difference does it make how I
amuse myself in the meantime? Yet to sit back and do nothing is not that easy
either—memories of an active self disturb the present, while the present
undermines the future. And while the world moves on as usual, trapped in an
immensity of time, I stagnate. The slightest prospect of change now strikes me
like the promise of a spectacular escape—change the expected deliverance from
annihilation.
(5)
I am in personal time when I sense a clock ticking inside me. It strikes the
hour when change recommends itself. And with a sense of self in motion, I
gravitate from change to change as from magnet to magnet, confluences of inner
and outer events delivering endings into beginnings. When nothing tugs or
pulls, I wait and listen. And upon completing a set number of revolutions, the
inner clock strikes again—directing my attention, urging me to move on. On this
path of least resistance, change is the vehicle while time marks durations of
distances, change in time delivering me where I belong.
(6)
I am in circular time when days string together like beads on a loop of time.
On some days I slip back to where I was many times before, going through the
same motions, sifting through the same thoughts. On other days I slide forward,
getting ahead of myself, yet I am not going any place in particular. Routine is
where the self and the world intersect. Change is the keeper of patterns I am
learning to read: in circles small and immense, everything is becoming
something else—either more or less of itself, or part of some other thing. In
circular time nothing is ever gained or lost or wasted, not even my
insignificant life.
(7)
Once in a while timelessness alights with energy spilling forth like a fountain
turned on full. Seized by the gush—surrendering to the moment at hand—in this
fissure of time I am an instrument to energy rushing through me, not acting
upon me. Yet whatever I touch is changed—in the absence of time I am an agent
of change. And in the changes I make I receive gifts unasked for, brought forth
by the sap that splits the seed, the bud, the bloom, or keeps the planets in
orbit."
Almost
thirty years have passed since I first described the seven perceptions of time.
Ever since I kept an eye on whether other people had made similar observations,
and though comparable inner states abound in literature, especially in poetry
of all ages, none are linked to the experience of time. The above seven
perceptions of time appear to be unprecedented, thus no footnotes, endnotes, or
source notes are available. The
Seven Faces of Time is a
personal account of an artist's inquiry, namely, how by adjusting to external
events an individual not only changes his or her perception of time, but also
re-aligns the outlook, the mindset, and mode of behavior.
To
incite thought, rather than challenge a reader's prevailing convictions, I have
incorporated the above observations in an allegorical journey, the dream-like
episodes taking a restless adolescent girl through the seven experiences of
time outlined above. In each episode she is in the same surroundings but
relates to them differently, an altered perception of time making her see home
and herself as if through a different lens. Questioning every shift in outlook
against her own experience, the girl proceeds assured that she is merely
sampling the options life has to offer. Years later she finds that in her adult
life switches in perspective occur daily, the practice saving her much
frustration. Finally her youthful ramblings begin to make sense.
To
highlight a point in an episode, some dream events are quoted from In the Wake of Dreams, the narrative in verse published by
iUniverse.com in 2001.
It is my hope that in reading The Seven Faces of Time the reader will notice that the fleeting
and effortless shifts in thought and behavior we practice daily as if by habit,
are triggered by interactions that evoke the experience of time, and are
neither accidental nor fixed but adjustable
by choice.
A. K.
New Mexico,
November 2004.
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