The Same Time

I met a guy from Sydney who was born one day after me. What time were you born? I asked him. 5.45 in the morning, he said. I was stunned. I didn't even need to go and check the time difference on google. I realised what that meant. You weren't born on the day after me, I told him. We were born on the same day! At the same time! Ah, no we weren't mate, it says on my birth certificate, he said before it dawned on his face much like the sun on that blessed day. What time were you born? he asked. I told him: 6.45 in the evening! He paused to think. Was that GMT or BST? he asked. BST! I replied. Fuck me! he said, we're like star twins! Fuck! Amazing! What's your favourite colour? How do you like your tea? Do you have a friend called Nigel? He paused. No hang on a second, he said, it needs to have been GMT. Mate, sorry, we just weren't born at the same time. Close though. I thought about it for a minute. Well, at least the same hour, I said. It'll be hour little secret, he told me.

even more on time

The question of what was before or after time has always bugged me, as well as how time could come into existence with the creation of the universe, since shouldn't there always have been time? But if time always existed, at what time was the creation of the universe? 10.30 on a Tuesday morning? This has always been baffling. Well I read a little bit the other day about Aristotle, and how he says that time is the measure of change. I have since tried to read the relevent part (Physics iv, 10-14) but Aristotle is a cagey bugger and rarely makes anything particularly clear, at least to my sullied brain. So apologies if you know about Aristotle and my simpleton's take on it offends you.

Aristotle says that time is a measure of change. (That's as much Aristotle as I understand. The rest is my interpretation.) Time doesn't exist inandof itself, it only exists as a by-product of change, as a means to measure change. Therefore in the pre-created universe (a rather nice impossibility), the changeless void, there was no time. Only when the universe began to change - changing from a changeless to a changing universe, which was the very first change - did time become apparent. So the act of creation was to institute change in a changeless universe.

This doesn't really take account of where the matter of the universe came from (it came from nowhere, obviously), nor how something changes from being changeless to changing, but it does neatly wed the beginning of time to the beginning of the universe (or at least the beginning of the changing universe).

So creation was the change from changeless to changing. And the end of the universe will be the change back, as change slows down until there is no change, although you suspect that the changes just get further and further apart, until there is a long period of changelessness, which eventually changes again back into changing - the universe slowing right down until it appears to be dead, and then starting up again. But you can't really have a period of changelessness, since if there is no change there is no time, since there is nothing to measure. To an observer, the 'periods' of changelessness would be instantaneous. So perhaps the universe wouldn't slow down at all, but would just one day change back to changelessness. That might mean that everyone was just left doing whatever they were doing at that time for a timeless eternity, but they wouldn't mind much and in any case I think you can safely discount this paragraph.

Time being thought of as a measure helps to explain why it was sometimes (not any more, apparently) called the 4th dimension, since you measure an event's height, length, depth and time, which is something else I hadn't got my head around. If you can think of other things you measure: price, stupidity, number of votes, etc, you can bring a whole new dimension to any argument you might be having.

I guess change being the cornerstone of the creation of the universe is why down-and-outs are always asking for more change. And even the Conservatives were telling people to vote for change recently.

Obviously I welcome anybody who can explain to me how wrong I am. Although you might have your work cut out.

On Time

bastards bastards bastards its going to be a long five years. Thank god though cos a short five years would be a sign that you were really fucking old, like as if you were 80 and then your 85 and it's like, wow that was quick, how the hell did that ever happen, what's on the telly, whaddyamean Kojak's not on anymore! One of the worst things about getting old - and I mean my sort of getting old not getting actually old as in decrepit, I mean the sort of old where you can still do things you used to when you were young just they hurt a lot but they haven't actually been fully taken away from you yet - anyway one of the worst things about getting old - older, I should have said, older - is that you realise that things that you thought had amazing significance when you were young were just flashing past most older people in the blink of an eye. I realised recently that the reason time goes slower when you're younger is that young people have quicker brains. Their brain does more in the time, so it appears to them that time is slower, the same as with flies and other little insects. Luckily they're also stupider, so they appear to take the same amount of time to think things - which is why it is possible for us to converse with them, just about - but actually they think at a very much faster rate. I've also realised that no matter how long you've been alive, or how long you live, it always seems like the same amount of time - a lifetime - so a long life or a short life seems the same. Well, life is short innit, goes so quick, they say. Well, of course it goes quick, everything went quick once it's finished, how quick do they think it was going to go? "Oh I thought life was going to take bloody ages but it only took 75 years, blink of an eye." People do talk an awful lot of total shite when you start thinking about it. Life isn't short or long. It's like saying space is big. Well, space is big, but you can also fit it into a matchbox. The reason we call life short is just that we fill ourselves up with so much past and future that the actual life we lead seems irrelevant. In fact it's as long if not longer than the life we used to lead on the savannah, and that seemed to take ages, unless you were eaten by a lion I suppose and then you'd just be glad to get the fuck out of there, you wouldn't be moaning about how quick it had gone. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that time is slow when you're young, fast when you're old, but remember this: it's always now.