Zeitgeists Reconsidered

I used with an unusual grace the word ‘zeitgeist’ today in a conversation I can’t quite remember the details of. Some while back, I noticed the word on Wordoftheday.com; a habit I try to keep up with but never seem to retain any words from. The definition is something like “The spirit of the time”, I’m sure Webster’s and the trusty old Oxford have slight variances, but as discussed in a couple of blogs past, I prefer applying my own logic and definition to intellectual standards – it makes me feel more smarter.

Coincidentally, the word ‘zeitgeist’ was presented a perfectly reasonable outlet again this evening, as I struggled to define the feeling invoked by listening to music from my youth. My closest neighbor is a huge fucking ogre of a man, not especially tall, but thick like a rugby player holding high rank in the scrum. I’ve witnessed him lift boulders the size of laundry hampers with just one anaconda-like arm. Mike and I were drinking some beer one day on the back porch and he too witnessed the outrageous display of might for himself.

Back to my blunted point: This evening, Tia and I sat on the porch listening to the whistle of burgers on the grill and the Alice In Chains: Unplugged coming from the Ogre’s lair. The music was unusually loud coming from his direction, very crisp, and a more-than-welcome element to the evening. Music, for me, has always seemed the very best mental epoxy for securing memories and “the spirit of the time”. The music seemed to shave 10 years away like Ricky Martin had never happened and flannel had never gone out of style. For a few minutes between eruptions of misfit barking, it was a beautiful moment: a moment which provoked me to further tickle my memory with other songs and albums from years ago.

My addiction to iTunes and subsequently – my iPod, has made me somewhat of an eclectic music junky, willing to huff, puff, snort, drink, shoot, slam, and smoke just about any track I can get my grimy little digital hands around. Tonight I uploaded the 2nd album I ever purchased; The Tea Party’s – Splendor Solis (a Canadian band who somehow missed the American “big-times” of rock n’ roll success in the early 90’s). Somehow the album had even missed its honorable mention on my iPod for the several months I’ve cared for the little white box, until tonight that is.

Listening to the album, as I’m doing right now, takes me back to my bedroom in Qualicum Beach as a 13 year old with a reputation for going ape shit on his older brother for petty reasons. The album was my escape, my down-to-Earth contention against the hip-hop, metal, early techno, laughter of punk teenagers, and dope fumes which wafted out of my brother’s bedroom across the hall. I’d play songs like “The River” and “Raven Skies” as loud as my little Panasonic piece of shit stereo could play them, to drown out the sounds of exactly what I’d be listening to and doing in a few years after I emerged from the haze of early adolescence.

As much as I thought I hated those days while I was experiencing them, I think back on them fondly and with a smile on my face. It’s strange how the “zeitgeist” can redefine itself after closer consideration and analysis from a safe distance in time.

Frozen Solid

131 people fell out of the sky the other day, frozen solid in a big aluminum can. The details of this tragedy are rather creepy, but what struck me the most was an image from the crash site. The image of Helios; Greek God of the Sun, hammered into a copper plate a couple of thousand years ago, eventually photographed, printed on what I presume is an adhesive vinyl, and finally stretched across the tail of that great big aluminum can – which until the other day, flew gracefully through the skies the way a god’s chariot might.

It’s odd the various ways we honor or dishonor our ancient ancestors. I remember thinking a decade ago (yes, I’ve thought since!) as I strolled through a disassembled and then reassembled Egyptian tomb in the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art about just how aggressive we are as a culture in our thirst for knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, mummies and all that jazz are one of the most fascinating subjects in my opinion, but in all the articles I’ve half-read (see previous post) and documentaries I’ve seen on the matter, I’ve never heard the question “Are we dishonoring these great civilizations?”.

King Tut (the most glorified ruler of Egypt if I’m not mistaken) was probably fairly comfy in his golden tomb in the warm sands of Giza. He was buried by his now-disbanded civilization in the finest way possible, ready to enter the afterlife which he probably had no doubt in. Will the next great civilization treat our most honorable figures with the same level of indecency? Will Abraham Lincoln be exhumed and paraded around the world?... the solar system? Perhaps through genetic technologies unthought-of his flesh and even his soul will be rekindled and put on display for those curious of The American Empire.

Maybe our rummaging in Egypt is actually the just what it will take for the Pharaohs to see the afterlife. Perhaps that meticulous preservation of flesh is just what will be necessary for science to bring alive their souls someday. Perhaps in their own sense of time (see The Two Ingredients) they have already opened their eyes to the afterlife and are living in nirvana with plasma televisions behind climate controlled glass in a museum somewhere 40 years from now.

The two ingredients

I admit, I'm the type of busy-bee that reads an article or watches a half hour of some PBS special and suddenly declares myself an expert of sorts on the subject at hand. Sure I may skew some of the details and perhaps even make up some of my own, but I feel I do the topic justice by spreading the word across thy land. I have recently begun to wonder if by spreading this haphazardly presented second hand knowledge I am doing the intellectual world injustice. A topic for another time I suppose... Now on with the crackpot gospel:

One of the many articles I've recently left half read was about a gentleman in New Zealand who claims that both Einstein and (who was that other scientist from way back… thinking… substituting fact with instinct…) Copernicus were wrong in their theory of where time fits into the grand scheme* of the universe. What this bloke** is saying is that time simply doesn’t exist, it’s just a system of measure instituted by humans to contain the natural flow of the universe and judge just how long we have to wait for dinner***. Things happen as a series of events and time is an illusion, the watch ticks because the gear turns. His idea, constructed on a solid foundation of education and understanding of physics, has turned not only caused intellectual chaos in the physics community, but also in my own grasp of the topic; a grip which is based on my observations of starry nights through squinty red eyes as a youth.

*Notice my heavy reliance on colloquialisms to fool the reader into believing what they are reading is purely genuine.
**An equally-heavy reliance on subject-appropriate slang.
***Simplified, nearly off-subject logic.

I came to the conclusion one late evening outside my apartment in town with a blurry telescope, that the universe had two simple ingredients; time and energy (AKA matter). My theory made sense to me for so many years, and satisfied that deeply curious side of me that simply wasn’t at peace without an answer. My theory was simple enough; every atom of energy simply dances at a different pace of time and with a electron partner or two. The pace and partner of the energy determines just what type of matter it is. Two ingredients; time and energy, simple enough eh?

Had it not been for my saunter through this article in my grossly-delinquent subscription to Wired Magazine, the events of this weekend wouldn’t have sent such fractures through my confidence in my theory. It was high noon, the sun beat down on North Freeport with a relentless cruelty. I decided to let those stupid mutts out for a leak and a squirrel chase, and followed them into the woods for similar reasons (a classy luxury afforded to me in our otherwise humble dwellings). As I walked down towards the secondary brook, the ghost outline of a snake in the grass caught my eye. The bastard was fucking huge!! Well over 18 inches and as round as a nickel! He (I always assume they’re men for some reason) had obviously been baking in the sun for much of the morning and had the energy of a wet cat. He moved quicker than I could run (I’m a fairly awkward creature, but I can move fast when I need to), slithering exactly the same way he would have ever had he not had a 300 lbs ape behind him, but in a much more rapid manner. My eyes took a moment to analyze what I’d just seen. The way that little fucker moved was almost like fast-forwarding through a movie, natural in all aspects except pace. Time meant nothing to the creature, only energy. This idea was only reinforced as I witnessed my youngest (Georgie the Beagle, Terrier, Chihuahua) stare aimlessly into the forest for the better half of the afternoon. Time is a total farce!... The news is on in 2 minutes! Gotta go!