Future tense?--only in your imagination

"Future Tense," 5 x 5 acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas

 

I'm reading "Why Time Flies," by Alan Burdock, a journalist for The New Yorker, who spent years(by our "time" studying time.

He divides his 280 page book into four chapters, The Hours, The Days, the Present and Why time flies. He actually discovered a 25th hour in a day in the Arctic. His is a "Mostly  Scientific Investigation" of how we measure time, what we think of it, how sunlight affects us and all organisms.

Extremely well-written and readable, the book will boggle your mind at the scientific, the history, the biologic, the physiology, the uninsured questions.

My conclusions so far is that linear tense-drive time as we perceive it is largely in our heads--past present and future.

For instance, what is "now"? We live in present tense, but how do you measure "now"? You can't, because by the time you reach the ed of this sentence, or even the next word, "now" has vanished. 

By the time you read the time on your watch or clock, it's already passed. Indeed, those around the world who coordinate time for this earth, for airlines and  your computers, know this. By the time that is "posted," it's already "past," not "now." Technically, you can't give an answer to "What time is it now?"

 Only Yahweh, who is timeless, couldn't say "I am that I am," not "I was" or "I will be." That is the definition of eternity, by the way. Past is only memories in our minds, and future is indefinite, what we imagine.

The biologic circadian rhythms of life on this earth and a rapidly expanding universe are something else, and we're also affected by that--when we sleep, when we're born, the list goes on.

So today's painting, "after" Christmas," and "before" tomorrow (the future), but not "now, comes out of reading, and my mind on our journey.