Banana peels on a merry-go-round

I ask Sheneal (the Time Keeper) again to explain how faeries can move up and down through time. She grinned and said, "if a faerie flies really, really fast and then shoots out a blinding flash of light, how fast is the light from her flash going?"

"The speed of light plus her speed? No, wait... Nothing travels faster than light..."

I guess I looked lost enough that she finally rescued me, "There is a ceiling to speed. The faster you go the less time you use up until you are traveling at the speed of time."

"I always heard that as the 'Speed of Light'"

"So you did. Einstein's Faerie was more clever then we sometimes give her credit for. She revealed the secret but hid it behind mushroom soup. The real equation is: Energy equals Mass in proportion to the speed of Time."

A small light bulb came on in my head: "So Mass is Energy trapped in Time?"

Sheneal smiled impishly, "And conversely, Energy is not trapped in Time."

"So Faeries simply turn into pure energy to escape Time?"

"Exactly right, if you consider completely wrong to be exactly right. In Faeries's default mode as Energy we are not in Time. You may have noticed that Faeries have a tendency to be a little transparent. That is because, for us to stay in one place, we need to apply some Mass to our Energy. "

"So that you will slow down?" I was beginning to feel like I was understanding some of the concepts.

"Aaa... No... Your are the ones that are moving. Time and Energy are standing still. You Mass-ive beings are falling at the speed of Time. Light (being pure energy) is standing still. That is why nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Because nothing can go slower than stopped."

I sighed. Once again everything got turned upside down and inside out. I started pacing (a habit I have when my mind is racing and I want to get somewhere but I am stuck where I am for whatever reason).

I stopped in front of Shira. She was staring at her "imaginary" world, totally engrossed in the events happening in front of her. I noticed that she flickered as if she was in a movie but only on every other frame.

I asked Sheneal about this flickering. She said, "What Shira is doing is so far above your level of understanding that you should not try to think about it. But I can say that the principles that allow her to be here and in that other world at the same "Time" are the same principles that we are talking about. Her Mass is anchored in both worlds."

"But, getting back to basics, I, Sheneal Gwyndistanie, am fully here, at least as much as a Faerie can be fully anywhere in your world. I have adjusted my Mass such that I am falling at the same rate as you. I may appear to fly at times but that is simply the fact that I control my Energy to have the precise Mass that mimics the apparent fall. It is kind of like a shortcut. You are falling in a kind of circular way which gives the impression of gravity. I am in the middle of your circle falling at the same speed but not taking the same circuitous route."

Now that was truly revealing! I was trying very hard to keep my head from exploding as I pictured myself swirling around on a merry-go-round, holding on desperately to keep from flying off, while Sheneal stood in the center unconcerned. "Hey, I said, how come you don't get dizzy?"

"I will admit the first time I actually tried talking with a human, I did get a little dizzy. I tried staying in contact the whole "Time" and found myself mimicking the circular fall through Time. But I soon learned to wait for the human to come back to my focus of attention before continuing. It is a little "choppy" but can be quite invigorating, especially when the human is affected by Gravity in between the waits. You should see yourselves from our perspective when you trip and fall. Between the waiting for you to come back and then to see you totally undone on the next turn of the wheel... it is quite funny."

She was on the verge of Unifying Energy, Mass, Time, Space and Gravity in one simple idea and all she could think about was a Vaudevillian slippery banana peel!

Time to agree

You may remember from an earlier post that "Sheneal is the time keeper, not like a watch keeps time but like a dam keeps a river". She is trying to teach me to see time the way that faes view time.
***
I have to admit that it is beyond me. It seems that the future is more like a different place than it is a different time as we see it. In our view there is only Now. But because the faerie realm spans much of our time and they can travel back and forth, our past and future are places they can pop into and experience for a while.
***
Much of what we consider faerie magic is simply their ability to travel in time. But I digress. The main reason for this entry is to discuss something that Sheneal is trying to enlighten me on which may come in handy if we use it in our dimension.
***
It seems that the faes can be in 2 times "at once" but they can only be in one place in one time. Once they enter in one of our Nows they may not return to it in a different place - they may return in the same place and relive the same moment in that place - but they may not return to the same time in a different place.
***
What does this have to do with us? The Now that they visit us in - the one that we are trapped in - has a naming convention. It has to do with major events in the timeline, almost like chapters of a huge novel. I am having a fair amount of trouble understanding the system.
***
The point is, Sheneal insists, that we have 24 (or 25) different names for the current Now. She says that it is nice to have a sense of where the sun is and all that, but converting from their system and then dividing by the rotation angle of Earth in juxtaposition to our Sun is a little bit of a chore.
***
So she was wondering if we could adopt a nice little plan that she came up with so that the faes would not have to do the "Angle of the Sun Conversion." She says that it would greatly benefit us also when we are trying to arrange meetings and gatherings around world.
***
She says that our current system puts too much emphasis on the position of the sun. And while she does admit that it is handy to know that it is 2 hours until bed time, or that it is almost time for lunch, or that school is almost over. That is not the whole story. If I am trying to arrange for a world wide event on the net or even to simply call my daughter in Hawaii I need to establish a local time reference point and then everyone has to convert their local time to the anchor local time.
***
Even using Greenwich Mean Time only confuses things because it is actually just another local time. And using it you not only have to convert the event to GMT but you have to convert your own local time to GMT! So now you have 3 numbers to juggle!
***
So how do you get around not having to convert? Sheneal says that it is very simple and very doable, it would cost next to nothing and the whole world (except a small portion of India) could adopt it over night.
***
The Plan
Sheneal suggests that we keep the local time (the one used for meals and bedtime) on the face of an analog clock. We could even decorate the clock to show local sun positioning. But since no one actually needs the numbers of the clock (many watches and clocks simply do not bother putting the numbers on any way), we should simply replace the numbers with letters.
***
How does that help? you say. Well, the letters are not in the same place on the clock for everyone. People in New York would have the "A" at the bottom of their clock perhaps and the people in California would have the "A" at the 90 degree position. Such that when the New Yorker and the Californian look at their own clocks (while not being able to agree on anything else) would be able to agree that it is "A-O'Clock" even though the hour hand was saying 6:00 and 3:00 respectively.
***
I asked: What about Daylight savings time and 12 hour clocks vs 24 hour time scales and digital clocks and the French? Sheneal frowned and asked me what the French had to do with it. And I explained that if it is an idea that does not come from France, they will never adopt it. She said there are some faeries in Paris that are already convincing some French people and that the only debate will be that the French will claim that they thought of it first. As will just about every other culture.
***
She said that the debate will get so intense that Egyptian and Sanskrit writings will be used to show that their culture had already thought of it eons ago. Finally the French will point out that the Cave of Lascaux had drawings of a global time (see graphic above) when other civilizations were still getting squashed by woolly mammoths.
***
Sheneal smiles coyly and says that of course it shows up in all those places - the faes have been trying to teach us this simple trick for a very long time. She says that it will now happen because the Internet will make it possible and compelling.
***
I will post the plan in the next blog as I will have to put some graphics together....

Creeping time

Yesterday and today creeps at this petty pace...

Today, or even more accurately, yesterday is the day that I welded the first faeries on the gate. I realize for you it is probably the same day (today?) as no one is reading these blogs as I put them up there. If anyone is reading this (now?) it is as a complete set because I sent out the url to family and friends sometime in the future.

Time is very confusing. Not so much because events happen in a specific order. I used to think that the phrase "Time is God's way of making sure everything does not happen at once" was funny, a joke. Now, I am beginning to think that it is one of the more profound statements ever made, disguising as a joke.

But the confusion of time to me is not the sequence of events so much as the utter darkness around anything but the "Now". The fact that Now is itself a mixture of different times is not so much a problem either. Looking out at the night sky and seeing a star as it was 4 or a hundred years ago, or even knowing that I could look through a high powered telescope and see 4 billion year old galaxies - in the Now, only seems to follow logically.

You could even, I suppose, find a set of celestial objects that represent the continuum of time. For instance, you might be able to find, in one field of view, stars from all points in time for a thousand years. Such that your eye, living in the Now could absorb light that originated 4 years ago, 5 years ago, 6 years ago .... 1003 years ago. 1000 stars, each as they were in different parts of the past. A mock continuum of time.

But the real dilemma is the utter inability to experience the same object in multiple time frames. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that I am enamored with video recording. It allows you to "go back in time". One of the things that I have always wanted to do is to take pictures of a person, preferably starting at a very young age, always in the same location and pose, over many years, and make a video of the person as they are in their many ages.

Watching that video would begin to scratch the surface of the confusion I feel with time. Things like mountains and oceans and have never seemed "real" to me in the sense that they are as they are for only a short time. A mountain was once an ocean and an ocean bottom was once on top of a mountain. Sea shells at 14,000 feet eventually taken back to the ocean by the streams and rivers of time.

But the feeling is even worse with people. I often try to see the little girl in an older lady or maybe how she looked "in her prime". Seeing a brown twinged picture on a fireplace mantel of a young soldier innocently being photographed before being sent off to the gruesomeness of war and then looking at the old man who is what has become of that young soldier.... and then wondering about all the life between the picture and the old man.... Where are all those "Nows" now?

When I was a kid, maybe 7 or 8, I looked into the eyes of my 30 year old self (I could not imagine myself beyond that ripe old age) and the 30 year old me seemed to be saying "have mercy on me, make right decisions, don't screw it up this time." It was a powerful feeling that I had such sway over someone so old. But very confusing.

(another side note: one of the things that tickles this part of my brain is David and Solomon. I have a picture in my mind of young David as a Giant Killer, Warrior, King - a young picture, never out of his twenties - thirties at the most. I have a picture in my mind of Solomon - wise king, white hair, grandfatherish. Occasionally I will ask my brain to reconcile the fact that David is Solomon's father.)

So what does all of this have to do with Sheneal, the next faerie to be welded to the gate? Sheneal is the time keeper, not like a watch keeps time but like a dam keeps a river. She stores time. As it passes she doesn't use it but simply allows it to accumulate in her. When she needs it she can tap into her reserves and pull out, say, a day or an extra month and use it all in one Now.

She is very old so she has accumulated quite a bit of reserve. She has spent many a human lifespans simply gathering time. In those years she has watched babies die of old age and grandsons fill the shoes of their grandfather's youth. You may have noticed that her wings are not filled in everywhere - that is because she is not entirely in this "Now" and those portions of her wings are the flimsiest and sometimes do not show up in our Now at all.

So Sheneal takes her place on the gate. If a rose grows, buds and sheds its petals overnight I will know that she is up to something. I wonder what I would do if I had time that I could spend where and when I needed it. I suppose I would save it for life and death type situations or being mischievous....