Time reflections
#63—Scientists can reflect time. I just chase it.
My family and I made the pilgrimage to Sydney this week to spend time with the loved ones we miss when we're not there. Returning to Sydney, the country I was born into, feels like moving within a paradox; one in which I simultaneously bathe in the warm waters of the past while the present tips an ice bucket over my head.
It's said time is an illusion, a construct to help us navigate the static nature of the universe in which the past, present and future coexist. I feel this coexistence, yet I live within the dimension of time, the measurement we use to differentiate between the days that came before in which we didn't ache, in which the world was less built, and in which older generations were young and alive.
Within this dimension are the timeless pieces, like the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains, part of the ancient Seven Sisters songline on Gundungurra Country, which is reflected in the Pleiades in the sky. We've just stopped by it now on our way west to Parkes and I feel every bit an eight year old staring at the same sandstone that has stayed in my blood. I can see the Snugglepot and Cuddlepie sticker mum and dad bought me from the gift shop as though it still exists. God I loved that sticker. There are rainbow lorikeets at the gift shop window. Mum unchanged, dad still here. This is what I feel, although my eyes see my own daughters leaning into the bars of the lookout, staring into the Jamison Valley, sucking on Caramello Koalas like they are quite possibly the finest thing to ever exist in this world.
When I return to Sydney, the people are comforting and familiar, unchanged and yet aged in a way that isn't static. Time is escaping us. If it be an illusion, life exists outside it. Time reaches forward, relentlessly, and I wonder how it is that physicists can now reflect it backwards, like a record turned in reverse, distorted and pitchy, maybe satanic.
I am no physicist. I cannot reflect time. The minutes surge by and I've not enough of them to get to where I'm going (which is somewhere very fulfilling). I can only rearrange the time within its construct, and so my dear friends, I find it necessary to reduce my time on Mind Flexing and send you these thought expeditions at the start of each month instead of fortnightly.
I want to thank you with the fullness of my heart for your company in this little online space. It is one thing to write, but another altogether to have an audience, and particularly one so engaging as yourselves. You are very much appreciated.
As I've written you now at the end of the month, I will post my next essay on October 9 and then move forward with essays on the first Thursday of each month.
Until then, use your time well. A x
Thank you for Mind Flexing with me. If you enjoyed this essay, please subscribe on Substack or your favourite podcast app, comment, click the ❤️ button, or share it with someone who would appreciate it. I’ll be back in a fortnight. Until then, keep 💪
There’s something about online writing that makes us feel we have to share more and more of ourselves, and it can rapidly become unhealthy and unsustainable. So I applaud your sensible decision to go in the opposite direction, though I’m also a little sad about it because your articles are among the best things I’ve come across in this space. I look forward to your monthly posts, Alia! 💛
I totally understand and am thinking of reducing my own output (not just for me to save time but also for others to be free of my incessant blathering ;) I agree with Steve, these platforms drain so much time and energy and we humans need to choose our own speed and output, so good on ya Alia.
I really love your writing and recordings and I'll definitely be reading and listening to whatever you've got to share however often that might be :)