So, you're still hanging around cafes in Paris. There's a Paris, Texas,
that has a Dairy Queen that is probably every bit as interesting as the
one in France. LoL!
You are probably thinking of Newtonian "time", a realist view; a
dimension independent of events. But, "time" based on duration is just a
subjective intellectual exercise in which humans sequence and compare
events based on the linear movement of the stars. In fact, Einstein
described time as "space-time"; a special theory of relativity.
If this is an example of your scientific writings, maybe you should get
some smarts: things don't move about - and change is impossible. I'm
going to have to give you an "F" for posting this little non-sense
message about your memories. It really tells us nothing about real time.
You might do better trying a little "time" management and post something
interesting to read instead of mundane cafe speculations.
According to Leibnitz and Kant, time is neither an event nor a thing,
and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be traveled. Heidegger
believed that we do not exist inside time, we ARE time. Parmenides went
further, maintaining that time, motion, and change were illusions,
leading to the paradoxes of his follower Zeno. Time as an illusion is
also a common theme in Buddhist thought.
Maybe it's "time" for you to go back and read a little Zen Buddhism,
which you seem to have skipped entirely when Zen Master Rama was
teaching. It's a funny thing about linear time: there is the past, which
we no longer have; there is present time, which is gone in a
split-second; and there is the future, which hasn't arrived yet. So,
what "time" is it, exactly? Go figure.
Zen Koan: "Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the
wind. One said, "The flag moves." The other said, "The wind moves." They
argued back and forth but could not agree. Hui-neng, the sixth
Patriarch, said: "Gentlemen! It is not the flag that moves. It is not
the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves." The two monks were
struck with awe."
On 12/7/2013 4:23 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
Today, for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, I find myself
in this cafe in Paris thinking about time.
Slippery stuff, time. You know, in that Einsteinian sense in which
sitting on a hot stove seems like eternity, but sitting for hours
talking to a beautiful woman seems like a moment. Science has recently
confirmed that our human perception of time is not fixed to an
immutable scale -- time really *does* slow down and speed up for us.
Time plays weird tricks with memory, too. Your first kiss seems like
only yesterday, but try to remember what you had for lunch only
yesterday.
Anyway, I'm sitting here flashing back to some of my time here in
Paris. I first came here when I was 15 or so, on a vacation with my
family. We were living in Morocco at the time, having spent our years
before Morocco living in America's Deep South. My mother had never
traveled to Europe before, my father had only been "overseas" once,
and that, too had been in Morocco. We knew nuthin'.
My brothers were younger, but I was old enough to have my mind blown
by Morocco. It was like stepping into a Whole Other Reality. Very
little of what I had been taught that life was like was what life was
like in Morocco. Very Third World, and very eye-opening. It
jumpstarted my previously-asleep American brain and got me thinkin'.
Been thinkin' ever since, and I genuinely thank the U.S. Air Force for
providing me with that opportunity.
But Paris! Seeing it for the first time was WAY eye-opening and
awakening, in every sense of the word. And in ways that had to do with
time. I had experienced fleeting moments of "time-slippage" before, in
the deserts of Morocco, but in Paris the odd "past-life flashbacks"
really started happening. Even though I was with my parents and two
younger brothers, I'd catch a glimpse of an older neighborhood in
Paris and just "flash back" for a moment or two. I had no idea what it
was (and still do not today), but it was as if for a moment some part
of me had "time-slipped" and gotten a peek into the events of another
life, in another time. The same thing has happened to me many times in
Paris since.
It happened again last night. I went to a bistro that has a fairly
interesting history, having been a favorite "writing cafe" of Charles
Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and François Villon.
http://www.lavenusnoire.fr/a-propos/
la Vénus Noire is a literal "caveau," its walls carved out of the
original limestone that forms the foundation of Paris. And sitting
there listening to quiet jazz and chatting with other people, I had a
few of those momentary flashbacks again. One instant I'd be there Here
And Now, in a room full of Parisians in modern dress talking about
modern things, and then Zap! the scene would change to the same room,
with everyone dressed as they would have been in the Belle Epoque.
None of these flashes lasted more than a couple of seconds, and I
can't give you any meaningful insights I gained from the experience,
but it was fun. Very "Midnight In Paris."
