Sunday, September 28, 2008

My opinion of time.

I think time is strange and inconsistent. Occasionally it stretches in agonizing slowness, with seconds feeling like minutes, and minutes turning to hours. Other times it vanishes, with hours becoming heartbeats in a steady rhythm. Whole days frequently seem misplaced as if they forgot where in the week they belong. Even weeks and months are subject to the ebb and flow of time speed distortion, seeming slow at first, then racing by unexpectedly, only to slow down again.
I think the strangest behavior of time is either: when it goes whirling by at a snail's pace, or: when it freezes so solid that movement feels similar to pushing through deep water. These sensations are almost opposite because when time flashes by extremely slowly it is that time is going by fast but it seems to take forever to do so. This experience is similar to the sensation of being in the state of half consciousness between asleep and awake. It is strange to me because it seems like time is passing at almost, but not quite, the exact wrong speed for whatever is happening.
Time freezing is an altogether different sensation that is a far more exhilarating experience. When it happens there is the innate knowledge that everything that happens is taking place in a matter of seconds even if it seems like minutes are going by in the time it takes to go a single step. Part of the exhilaration of time freezing is the perspective that almost always accompanies it, at least in my experience. The best way I can describe it is to say: it is like controlling a puppet through telekinetic means while being telepathically linked to every sensation experienced by that puppet in an arbitrary fashion similar to watching someone from a safe balcony, at the same time knowing that the puppet being watched and controlled is your own body. What is even weirder is that knowing it is my own body doesn't have any effect on its importance. As long as time is frozen my body is just a puppet that can blast like lightning through the liquid air so fast that nothing else seems to move unless it has been accelerated to a similar speed of temporal distortion. At times this experience can be so subtle (like a dream) or so short (like an instant long blackout) that it doesn't even register consciously but, when thought about, is the only explanation of how the speed of non-reflexive, or even semi-reflexive actions taken during that time could be possible.

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