Do you need time?
When you see a path before you, it is not your path.
You make your path by venturing into the unknown.
Step by step, day by day.
This is your path.
(Paraphrasing Antonio Machado)
Quantum time=soft focus mind
Time will contract and expand at the same time. It’s the law of relativity. When you know how to do something in a way,in a fashion, a style that only you can do it, time has no meaning. There is no place to arrive and no schedule to say you are late and no one who can block that path that you are creating by taking one step after another.
My friend Joe Roman showed me how to take decent pictures with a small digital camera in 2010, after we had spent some days in Chiang Mai. We then jumped on a couple of Vespa scooters, barreled them up the most beautiful winding roads to the magical village of Pai together After w few days of bliss in that peaceful Oasis, he sent me on my way to Laos. Before he put me on the bus to go up to where I was going to cross the border to then take a two day boat ride down to Luang Prabang, he explained the rule of three, exposure time, and how to frame a shot to me.
“When you learn how to do something new, you might as well start doing it in an artistic way,” he said, “I wish I could come with you, but I have to go back to my kids and teach the little snot noses how to speak English.”
I will never forget that voyage and I will always apply that wisdom to whatever new and exciting thing flirts with my attention at any given time.
Time! Time stands still when the Jazz or Funk band, heck, even if a shitty jam band like the Grateful Dead finally hits the sweet spot, is in the pocket, hitting a groove. It expands when you are having a great home cooked meal with your friends, it floats when you are riding a bike through a lush forest on a road without drivers that seem to have won their licenses in the local lottery are making you fear for your life. Time explodes in a firework of joy and exuberance when you are making love with the right person.
Time just is. It’s not measurable by clocks and calendars or drill sergeants. It’s in your head, in your hands in your feet, in the rhythm, cadence and melody of you loving, kind words when you are explaining something to a child that really wants to know something.
Time is Art.
That was the title of a leaflet I was handed by ‘yet another hippie’ at Burning Man in 2005. On it the author explained the Mayan Calendar and the 260 day cycle of creation. The leaflet explained that the Calendar we are forced to live by is unnatural. It is based on greed, war and suppression. It was a construct of super powerful men who needed to force their victims into coughing up taxes for their wars of expansion. It was arbitrary and neglected the needs of the women to be in sync with the moon.
The reason December is called December is because after making the civilized transition from paying homage to the Moon 13 times for each run through the four seasons, collecting taxes ten times a year was not satisfactory any more. S Julius Cesar introduced the month of July to raise money for his attempt to go after Asterix and Obelix. Then he just kept it in play because who does not want a bit of extra play money once a year?
That worked so well that his predecessor, Augustus, figured he could just pull that play again without too much resistance.
That’s why.. Dig it now. Sept-ember. Oct-ober, Nov-ember, Dec-ember.
The seventh, eight, ninth and tenth month just became the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th.
No big deal. Der Führer knows best. Shut up and pay you damn taxes and give me your first and second born son. I need some cannon fodder to defeat the evil stranger living in the woods with his unruly brood that is not producing anything I can rob and appropriate or sell for a profit except ‘land and natural resources’….
Download a moon Calendar on your lovely rainbow colored ICal app, or whatever app you are using on your Android device. See how the moon lines up with your creative spurts, “harvest times” your solstices and your tides.
Realize that the time you get paid and the time you have to cough up the rent never align within themselves, always make you feel late and like you are being pushed around by some evil Gmork from Hell. Yeah that is the time that is made by Man. By shareholder values and dividend margins. That time marches like a jackbooted army right through your town, rapes women and children and anyone with a sphincter that is not able to protect themselves by brute force. That’s not time, that is a prison, a grindstone, a forced March to Waterloo or Kursk or let’s say Phnom Pen or Saigon.
Time is Art. If you make time for art, you will understand. It does not matter if you have the means to go to fancy retreats and do Yoga or go fishing on your spouses expense account. Art is not a pretty thing produced by people with to much leisure. It is field work, getting your hands dirty, rocking out on a swaying fishing boat day by day so you can be pulling in a big one every now and then.
Time matters. But it is not materialistic. It does not charge interest and it does not accumulate compound interest. Time flows, flies, laughs and cries.
Time is Art.
When you see a path in front of you, it is not your path.
You make your path by venturing into the unknown.
Step by step, day by day.
This is your path.
(Paraphrasing Antonio Machado)
Keep dreaming ___stay creative.
You got this.
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