Monday, May 17, 2010

Where Time Disappears

I've noticed a new Einsteinian effect when I'm working in my planetarium - time disappears! This is counter intuitive at first, for if I am master of my stars, my season, with the very night and day at my command, how can there BE no time?

Shut off from the outside world, hours don't seem to pass. Perhaps we have such easy access to time in the outer world .. we are never far from cellphones, watches, computers, the very sun itself in the sky .. that we always have an innate sense of what TIME IT IS, or at least how much time has passed .. its getting dark.. morning is wearing on .. the mailman just went by ..

But in the pristine chamber of our secret theater .. time stands still. I will go in to fiddle with a speaker or try a new effect .. and emerge after an imagined 10 minutes to find 2 hours in fact slipped by!

This is neither good nor bad in itself I suppose. But .. are we not happiest when we detach from time? Is that not the floating suspension of sleep .. the universal feeling of love, of having FUN .. the best times of our lives seemed to be timeless. Thus it is in my planetarium.

Therefore .. it is good!