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20 sept 99. |
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audio playback:
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the game, end credits; star wars, 1977 version. |
this is really frightening: i feel like i've been living
einstein's theory of relativity. a significant amount
of time has passed
since i left new mexico -- almost 2 years -- but i realize
it feels like really no time has
passed -- ever since i left, part of me has been trapped
at a point in time in albuquerque, reliving
those events
over and over, oblivious to the passage of time.
meanwhile, people close to me who were in new mexico during
that time, and among the most important people
in my life -- rip, dad, scooter, debbie -- might now interact
with me as though they've missed me, missed the time that has
passed, but for me it always feels like yesterday that i last
saw them. shouldn't i be feeling the same passage of time?
einstein's theory of relativity states, among other things,
that as a particle approaches the speed of light, it ages
more slowly than particles around it. such that if an
astronaut were to go on a journey at near the speed of
light for, say, a year, she would return at the end of
the journey to find that, say, 30 years had passed on earth.
the astronaut would have lived a year, yet she
would find that her parents had died, friends had grown old,
children had grown up. in essence the astronaut will have
been living in a time/space 'bubble' of sorts, while everything
outside of that bubble will have aged normally. and i find that
i've been experiencing the emotional/psychological equivalent of that
phenomenon.
did einstein absorb trauma, as i did?
did he realize there is an emotional/interpersonal counterpart
to his theory?
there is something significant to the fact that i first met g
in a bubble, this one created from both being on a plane flight, a group of
people all
winging through space together, shielded and cut off from the
rest of the world around them; as well as created from the point in
time being the holidays, one year later, a time when i felt
incredibly exposed & terrified ... i can't quite place
it, but it was being in that emotional/memory/spatial bubble
and having her be there next to me, showing genuine curiosity and
interest in me, asking me questions about what i think
(so few other girls i meet do this),
and the openness between us -- mind to mind, heart to heart, spirit to
spirit -- that let us talk so freely and naturally on that flight.
had all those elements not been in place precisely, we would not
have had the same conversation. she was in just the right
place at the right time, and the parameters, the conditions of my
bubble was structured to be receptive to this particular person.
her presence, and our gentle connection,
planted a welcome seed -- showing me warmth
and compassion, letting me feel affection for someone again,
the beginnings of something Real.
i don't know the next time we'll get to see each other.
it could be
months, it could be years. it doesn't matter. just knowing
she exists gives me
such comfort, and faith ... no longer do i feel so painfully alone, nor
feel that i will ever be alone.
Time goes from present to past. - Dogen Zenji
