I've been on the road for four and a half months. That sounds like a long time and it feels even longer. It sprawls out, taking up space in my mind the way summers did when I was a kid. This is the longest I've ever spent without a job or school. I wonder how I'd fill my days if I were at home. Would I distract myself with chores and projects? Would the days melt into each other?
I just finished The Order of Time, a book by the quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli. Kate mentioned him to me a few years ago."He writes that the universe is not made out of stones, but kisses," she said. "Isn't that a beautiful way of describing reality?"
The book opened up a portal to learning more about quantum time, which is, as you might imagine, nothing but portals.
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It's no coincidence that I'm fascinated with the passage of time while living without a routine and moving around every few days. It's especially clear, while traveling, that time isn't linear or absolute.
One example Rovelli cites is that time passes more quickly at altitude than it does at sea level, though you need super-precise clocks to observe the difference. (Here I will disclose that I didn't even take high-school physics, and my understanding of relativity is mostly based on Interstellar, so I'm not going to try to explain further.)
In Hawaii, you'll hear the phrase "Hawaiian time" or "island time," which is both a lifestyle and a description of reality. Time passes differently in Hawaii than on the mainland or anywhere else in the universe. Einstein (famously!) proved that time can't be separated from location or movement through space.
Your experience of time depends on how you're feeling, what you're doing, and where your attention is focused. Think about how time expands if you're doing something for the first time—it feels dramatically longer to drive to a new destination than it does on the way back, when the route is familiar.
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The Ancient Greeks had chronos (clock time) and kairos (god's time, or soul time, which is subjective and connected to your fate). The construct that western culture inherited—which led to the creation of Greenwich Mean Time and the fuckery surrounding it, and which equates time with labor and money—is all chronos. But there are many other ways of thinking about time.
Time, Rovelli says, is a measurement of change. Octavia Butler, a time traveler herself, wrote, "All that you touch you change, all that you change changes you, the only lasting truth is change, God is change."
In their latest newsletter, Annika Hansteen-Izora invokes the image of time as water, flowing across and between generations. Time, they write, is not a commodity to earn, save, spend, or waste. Time is nourishing…something to be savored instead of feared or denied.
I've been trying to let time unfold, which means embracing boredom on syrupy afternoons, waking up when I feel like it, and not focusing too much on where I'll be next week. It rules, mostly. The present feels wide-open in a way that's both exhilarating and empty.
There's a word in Japanese, ma, which means a gap in time or space. It represents intentional emptiness—in minimalist architecture, for example, or ikebana. Ma is sacred; the space from which life is created.
Many non-western cultures have a similar concept, a generative darkness outside of time. It's both emptiness and possibility. There's something quantum about that, don't you think?
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While reading about the history of quantum theory (lol, this is how I choose to use my one wild and precious life...), I learned that Schrodinger (he of the cat, and also a pioneer in quantum mechanics), was a student of Vedanta and the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. In Vedanta, there is no separation between beings. All consciousness is part of a unified whole.
Quantum physics, I've come to find out, is the study of interactions at various scales, from the tiniest particles to solar systems and galaxies. It tells us that reality is an intricate web of interactions that exist in relation to one another. (This is where Rovelli reminds us that the universe is made up of "happenings," like kisses).
Everything is a matter of perspective, including past and future. If you zoom in close enough or zoom out far enough, it's clear that everything is connected, linked in a web of space and time.
I love that this insight extends across many eastern philosophies and Indigenous traditions; it weaves into ecology and social justice movements, too. It's uncanny how consistent it is with people's descriptions of near-death experiences and spiritual trances, as well as the reality that many say they're able to see when they trip on psychedelics.
Today I read Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life, the basis of the movie Arrival. It's a short story about how perception—in this case, learning an alien language—can change your experience of time. These aliens, called heptapods, have eyes on every side of their bodies; they're oriented equally in every direction, and their language reflects a simultaneous experience of reality.
Rather than perceiving time as a linear series of causes and effects, they paint a picture of interconnected intentions and outcomes.
It's truly mind-bending to think we have the power to shape time through our perception and presence. We can choose to remember instead of forgetting. We imagine the future in breathtaking detail and believe that it's just as real as the past. We can trust that we're exactly where we need to be.
I'm planning for this to be a series, and I think the next post will be about time-traveling, world-building, and Afrofuturism—including the magic of Alice Coltrane and the otherworldliness of Janelle Monae. Stay tuned. And let me know what you're dreaming up these days.
xx, sending you love across space and time 🕸
Really enjoyed this reflection. Arrival and the book that inspired it are both so good. If you haven't read the book Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, I highly recommend it. Every chapter he dreams up a world in which time is experienced differently.