September 24, 2020

Yesterday we set out along the Kalawahine Trail to the Manoa Cliff trail up through the PuuOhiaTrail and back down the service road from Tantalus Mountain top. Only three miles we took our time with an elevation gain of about eight hundred feet. Along the way the blue sky became gray with rain and cooling breeze. Nancy Rawlins two small dogs were shivering with the cold and one came up my chest as I lay on the side trail for warmth so she dried them off and carried one in her doggy pouch.  I remembered our time together with shared elation in seeing the lush vegetation including majestic trees, green and brown colors against the gray and sometimes blue sky with the three dimensional views of the trail, steep drop offs into the jungle of growth among the volcanic boulders sometimes exposing the underlying geology of our topography. Eons of time ago (110,000 to 80,000 years ago) the Tantalus volcanic Crater above us spewed molten lava crating the mountains we now were hiking on. 

"The Honolulu Volcanics are a group of volcanoes which form a volcanic field on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, more specifically in that island's southeastern sector and in the city of Honolulu from Pearl Harbor to the Mokapu Peninsula. It is part of the rejuvenated stage of Hawaiian volcanic activity, which occurred after the main stage of volcanic activity that on Oahu built the Koʻolau volcano. These volcanoes formed through dominantly explosive eruptions and gave rise to cinder cones, lava flows, tuff cones and volcanic islands. Among these are well known landmarks such as Diamond Head and Punchbowl Crater.
Volcanic activity began less than one million years ago and occurred at between 40 and 30 separate volcanic vents, some of which are submarine. Sea level varied during the activity of the volcanic field, and some volcanic eruptions have been dated through correlation with individual sea level fluctuations. The field erupted various kinds of lavas of mostly basaltic type with a high content of xenoliths. During eruptions, ascending magma often underwent interactions with water and thus caused steam explosions and the formation of particular volcanic structures such as tuff cones. The last eruption took place 35,000 or 76,000 years ago and future hazardous eruptions are possible."(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu_Volcanics)

On the way on PuuOhia Trail the native white hibiscus were blooming in abundance and glory.  The challenges of our hike included finding the footing on steep steps up and over fallen large trees. Sweating. shivering, catching my breath at times we merrily made progress with smiles on our faces. I have had other experiences of shivering with being naked on a bed, nurses attending to me, waiting for the specialist cardiologist to come while I was being prepared for cardiac catheterization. I think they put me in the coldest room. After coming to consciousness I lay flat in another cold room being told that I could not stand up for a few hours so the urinal was given to me for my need to urinate but though I had great urgency there was no flow but great discomfort. Time slowed in these moments in the hospital while I suffered so that when the nurses exited the room I stood up to allow the urine to flow with great relief but great consternation from the nursing staff since I set off all the alarms attached to the bed and my person with tubes attached. I had practice in past experiences of this agony of time and existence when waking from open heart surgery more than twenty five years prior at Saint Francis Hospital. Now with a breathing tube in my lungs I was paralyzed with a drug that prevented me from movings for a few hours. I heard my wife Ann by my side telling me to relax but I needed to tell her that my throat was painfully dry and I needed to drink some water but maybe only some gasps came out since I couldn't move or talk. To me a torture of dry mouth so I meditate on the moment to moment being here and now for the two hours when they stopped the medicine and I then could get the tube removed and get some ice chips in my mouth. 

So here is my description of two times. One with pleasure and little concern for the moments from now to our next destination while the other the moments were different with awareness of one moment to the next and my efforts to calm myself, meditate, and by my attention to my stream of consciousness let time pass. I call these moments subjective time. No clock is necessary but the experiences of subjective time of these two different type of time experiences have many adjective, adverbs, and verbs humanizing the experience of the passage of time. 

In physics time becomes a factor in three dimensional space adding a dimension. Einstein has some wonderful thought experiments which include time with the constant being the speed of light. With two observers one stationary while the other is moving time differs so the time variable becomes an illusion so time changes depending on the observer leading us now to have to correct our clocks beamed from satellite to our position due to the satellites either moving toward us or away from us. Did time begin? Will time end? Now cosmology has various results suggesting these are now not easily answered but the second law of thermodynamics entropy relates to time and change. If there is no change in our environment there is no time and no environment, nothing. Can something come from nothing? Well, now quantum physics suggest a surprising answer. Yes. How are these explanations and conceptions of time related to our subjective experiences of time? Watch Interstellar the movie for some suggestions.    

My experiences during the hike and afterwards can be described as having a good time. My experiences in the hospital included enduring existing with great discomfort where time was endured requiring my attention to the here and now effectively letting time pass with me the ever present here and now observor. If we moved away from the earth at greater speed approaching the speed of light our journey maybe in years to us will be centuries to those left behind. I find all of this interesting knowing that also time will no longer exist in the personal subjective sense once our brains stop functioning. In memory and art we can stop the limits of time and see the human in times changes.  

So there is memory which incorporate our experiences in time and space allowing us to have an evolutionary benefit for survival in an environment full of risks. This is another subject for my musing another time. 

Leonard

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leonardsjacobs/albums/72157603520494610

Salvador Dali

Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,

And burn the long-liv'd Phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,

And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets;

But I forbid thee one more heinous crime:

O, carve not with the hours my love's fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen!

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old Time! Despite thy wrong

My love shall in my verse ever live young.

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND AND THE THEME OF TIME

August 25, 2016 · by Reika (Flower Clocks) · in Writing · Leave a comment

In “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, one of the most famous scenes is the one where Alice attends a mad tea-party with the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse.

One part that deals with Time is when the Mad Hatter takes out his watch, it seems to be broken because it has been wrong two days in a row.

Alice observed that the watch was pretty strange.

“It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is.”

It turns out that the Mad Hatter had quarrelled with Time last March . . .

“And ever since that,” the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, “he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.”

Six o’clock meaning tea-time, so they have been stuck in that tea-party for ages!

Of course, time ran curiously in Wonderland because it was simply a dream. Another thing to remember is that when Alice wakes up from the dream, it’s tea-time, too!

In the next book, “Through the Looking Glass” it’s also mentioned that in Wonderland, the days are sometimes merged together. According to the Red Queen:

“Now here, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together — for warmth, you know.”

https://flowerclocks.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/alices-adventures-in-wonderland-and-the-theme-of-time/#:~:text=It's%20always%20six%20o'clock,it's%20tea%2Dtime%2C%20too!

For a more complete description of Alice in Wonderland see

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/time-and-place-in-lewis-carrolls-dream-worlds

Time and nostalgia are connected. see

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/201405/nostalgia-mental-time-machine

and

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/smarter-living/coronavirus-nostalgia.html