The Absence of Time

(A stencil I did this evening)


There has been a reoccuring theme in my life the past couple days. The book I have been reading, a movie I just watched, to the NPR show this morning. All of them discuss the concept of time, reality, and presence. In the book I'm reading this girl named Athena dances every morning, a type of prayer if you will, dances for an hour. Until her concsiousness is static, no movement, no time. It is her way to feel God in is infinite eternity.

In the movie I watched, a documentary on Quantum Physics, they also discuss what is real time. If you take a cat-scan of the brain while someone is looking at a picture, then compare that cat-scan to the person imagining the picture, the scan shows the exact same areas of the brain in use. The brain does not distinguish betweek what is "real" versus what is imagined. Thus allowing we as people to create and live many realities, because to the brain there is no difference.

Then this morning on the radio the show, they discussed how music, prayer, or exercise, leads many people into a state of being where time is nonexistant. The body is caught up in the moment, the mind focused to a point where nothing else exists but the reality at hand. Time, love, temperature, sounds, etc...all vanish. The mind and spirit are on a different plane seperated from the body and surroundings.

All these themes came to a climax this afternoon. I was climbing on Independence Pass with Andre, Jamie, and Teresa at the Ice Caves. There was a very steep 11b that looked so inviting, challenging, it had to be climbed. The first go at the climb I fell 1ft from the anchors. My arms throbbing, feeling like a vice was tightening around them, my arms in a pitbulls mouth. I came down, rested, slowed the breathing, and reclimbed the moves in my head. Stopping to clip, rest, and move through the dificult sections. The second ascent went very quickly. It wasn't until the 4th bolt that my head came back to reality. It was as if the previous 30ft hadn't even existed, a memory gap, only the feeling of silence and still waters in my brain. Once my head clicked in I could feel my chest heave, arms holding the weight of my body, skin burning on the fingers. Then a second or two later and its all gone again, 2 bolts to the anchors, I vanish, then I am at the top. The climb clicks in, the trees blow to the south, its drizzling, I'm back to reality.