2011.01.07 06:00 - Time Session

Comments by Zen Arado. First session of the year and a revision of earlier sessions. Pema's book is at:  http://wiki.playasbeing.org/PaB_Books/Magic_of_Time

Introductory and settling in period:

Pema Pera: Hi Eliza!
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Pema :)
Bleu Oleander: hi everyone :)
Eliza Madrigal: HI Bleu :)
Maxine Walden: hi, all :)
Riddle Sideways: Morning, Maxine and Blu and Zen
Riddle Sideways: amd Bruc
Eliza Madrigal: very dazzling first thing in the morning, Riddle :)
Maxine Walden: Happy New Year (even if a week late)
Eliza Madrigal: Hello Maxine and Bruce :)
Pema Pera: hi everybody streaming in :)
Eliza Madrigal: Hey, Zen
Bruce Mowbray: Hello!
Maxine Walden: yes, the rotating neutron star Riddle?
Bleu Oleander: yes, dazzling indeed!
Zen Arado: Hiya all
Bleu Oleander: hi Zen
Riddle Sideways: not actually this bright, it is illusion
Maxine Walden: :)
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Pema Pera: neutron stars are affectionately known as "degenerate stars" in my field :)
Eliza Madrigal: hehehe
Bleu Oleander: :)
Maxine Walden: ah....maybe Riddle is giving us a representation of Time
Pema Pera: actually, neutron stars, in the form of pulsars, are by faaaar the most precise clocks in the Universe!
Maxine Walden: well, interesting!
Bleu Oleander: hi Jan
Riddle Sideways: you guys always seem to work things around to the subject at hand :)
Pema Pera: :-)
Maxine Walden: :)), was thinking how mesmerizingly beautiful your av is, Riddle
Bleu Oleander: timely
Zen Arado: bought her an AO last night and it won't transfer drat
Zen Arado: wow yes Riddle
Zen Arado: a being of light
Riddle Sideways: TY, it is all in the persuit of art
Eliza Madrigal: well pursued!
Bleu Oleander: :))
Maxine Walden: :))
Riddle Sideways: :)
Pema Pera: I wonder what kind of AO Riddle is using now . . .
Zen Arado: you couldn't do anything like that in FL
Bleu Oleander: ... but can you dance Riddle?
Riddle Sideways: are we sure?
Zen Arado: could you?
Pema Pera: can you do the PaB dance with the neutron star, Riddle?
Pema Pera: hehe, Bleu
Pema Pera: btw, would anybody like to volunteer to post the chat log for today?
Zen Arado: I can do it
Pema Pera: thanks a lot, Zen!
Maxine Walden: thanks, Zen
Zen Arado: Hi Wol
Pema Pera: hi, Wol !!
Riddle Sideways: Hi Wol
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Wol :)
Bleu Oleander: hi Wol :)
Maxine Walden: hi, Wol

Pema begins the meeting proper:

Pema Pera: Well, today we will start up our Time session series again -- with a blank Slate
Pema Pera: Hi Vector!
Maxine Walden: hi, Vector
Bleu Oleander: hi Vector :)
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Vector :)
Riddle Sideways: got one
Eliza Madrigal: me too, since riddle is hyptnoizing me...
Wol Euler sneaks in quietly
Zen Arado: Hi Vector
Eliza Madrigal: *hypnotizing, heh
Pema Pera: hi Strannik!
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Strannik:))
Vector Marksman: Hi all
Zen Arado: Hi Strannik :)
Riddle Sideways: Hi Vector and strann
Strannik Zipper: Greetings
Bleu Oleander: hi Strannik
Pema Pera: would anybody like to say what he/she finds interesting/puzzling about time, to get started?
Wol Euler: shall I start?
Bleu Oleander: still don't know what it is :)
Pema Pera: :-)
Maxine Walden: please, wol
Zen Arado: was going to say that
Wol Euler: I can remember in perhaps 8th grade writing an essay on "Hamlet" and thinking about time, for the first time.
Pema Pera: wow!
Wol Euler: How odd it was to write about him in various times and tenses: at the beginning he's alive and at the end he's dead.
Bruce Mowbray: seems impossible to "step out of time" -- We ARE it - It is us.
Zen Arado: Hi Brian
Bruce Mowbray: Hi Brian.
Zen Arado: to be or not to be ?
Pema Pera: Hi Brain!
Wol Euler: So if I write about the end of the play, I have to describe him as a dead person, but if in my next paragraph I referred to an earlier incident he was alive again in my thoughts
Bleu Oleander: hi Brian
Pema Pera: and hi Six!
Wol Euler: all the while my own time was flowing onwards, taking these points of his time like markers on the line with it.
Wol Euler: I found that fascinating and confusing.
Maxine Walden: very interesting, Wol
--BELL--
Wol Euler: (done)
Zen Arado: you can play with time in fiction
Bleu Oleander: can play with time in rl too
Zen Arado: but w play with time in our minds
Zen Arado: we*
Zen Arado: sorry forgot break
Strannik Zipper: No wonder I like Doctor Who!
Zen Arado: :)
Pema Pera: :-)
Pema Pera: I always loved any science fiction story about time travel, when I was in high school . . .
Maxine Walden: Wol's example illustrates an aspect of Awareness or perhaps attentiveness which Pema was also writing about; as if our Awareness is a lens/perceiver/conceiver of farious aspects of Time
Maxine Walden: *various aspects
Pema Pera: Wol, while you were puzzling over that, did you consider the possibility that perhaps the time line model might not be correct, or at least not the only model?
Wol Euler: In all honesty? probably not, no :)
Pema Pera: I didn't either at that time :-)
Wol Euler: I did visualize it as a clothesline spinning out behind me,with incidents pegged to it
Pema Pera: it's somehow soooo ingrained
Wol Euler: mmhmm
Zen Arado: the way I learned history in school was so linear time oriented
Pema Pera: and yet . . . we never leave the present
Zen Arado: hammered into us
Pema Pera: it would be fascinating to walk into an elementary school class, and spend an hour trying out an "eternal now" model . . . .
Strannik Zipper: we never leave the present, except to be lost in thought
Zen Arado: Henry the eightth lives now ?
Maxine Walden: what do you envision you would find, Pema, in that elementery class today?
Zen Arado: :)
Bleu Oleander: what does it mean to be in the present if your mind is somewhere else?
Strannik Zipper: it means you are not present
Pema Pera: I have no idea, Maxine
Zen Arado: my mind was often somewhere else in school :(
Maxine Walden: :))
Riddle Sideways: some of the most enjoyable books/stories are told the way the story should be told, not by some straight time line
Wol Euler remembers "Infinite Jest" and smiles
Zen Arado: daydreaming is space and time shift?
Zen Arado: used to do a lot of that
Bleu Oleander: what part of "me" is present?
Strannik Zipper: daydreaming can at least be avoiding the present
Pema Pera: Wol, during the last RL PaB retreat, we talked about time -- about how we have (thoughts about) past and future, but how we are (always in) the present
Wol Euler nods
Pema Pera: so dropping what you have to see what you are means coming back to the present
Pema Pera: and Strannik and Bleu: even daydreaming happens in the present, though it may be *about* other times and places
Bruce Mowbray: in a psychological sense, yes.
Pema Pera: but in fact you can never leave the present
Bruce Mowbray: but if Time is what we ARE, then we do not stop being Time even when daydreaming.
Pema Pera: only pretend-play in day dreams etc
Brian Roop: waht about the deja vu experience?
Wol Euler: well, I think that depends on your definition of the "you" that never leaves it
Strannik Zipper: I think the present can be expanded by being more present in it
Pema Pera: yes, Wol, good question!
Wol Euler: immersive memory or flow take us out of consciousness-of-present
Riddle Sideways really wants Stim to be here to explain zeroeth time
Bruce Mowbray ponders "Deja vu."
Bleu Oleander: that's what I was thinking Wol
Strannik Zipper: Wol - I think it is the "you" that would rather be in a thought-story than present in the present
Eliza Madrigal: not out of consciousness but out of 'thinking' perhaps...
Wol Euler: yes, not thinking about, not aware-of
Pema Pera: nice gradations!
Wol Euler: Strannik, for me these immersive memory events are not evasions, they arise spontaneously
Zen Arado: if we are always in the present, thinking of past and future just uses up brain resources that could be used for the present
Pema Pera: oh, it is very practical to plan and remember, as such, nothing wrong with that, couldn't live without it
Pema Pera: just a matter of how you consider it
Wol Euler nods.
Pema Pera: as a tool or as something that is ultimately real
Pema Pera: we tend to diminish the meaning of the present to almost nothing
Pema Pera: always live for the future, while perhaps fretting about the past -- THAT is the problem
Wol Euler: ha!
Brian Roop: whyh fret about the past
Eliza Madrigal: and perhaps diminish consciousness/awareness to thinking?
Brian Roop: ?
Brian Roop: all we can do is learn from the past
Vector Marksman: a matter of balance between linear time and presence
Brian Roop: can't be undone
Pema Pera: yes, Brian, I agree
Maxine Walden: yes, we may consider the present as only a pinpoint of experience rather than a grounding
Pema Pera: yet many people fret :)
Zen Arado: guilt, regrets, shame
Wol Euler nods to Zen
Brian Roop: forgiveness is the great art
Bleu Oleander: actually, aren't we always in the past as it takes fractions of a second to make us consciously aware of the present?
Maxine Walden: holding onto fantasies...
Brian Roop: ourselves, others
Brian Roop: keeping the door open for those who won't forgive us
Pema Pera: we have the choice to view past and future as ornaments of the present, enlarging and enriches the possibilities of being alive right now
Strannik Zipper: I would like to suggest two experiences of time in the present in the form of two paintings as described by David Hockney:
Strannik Zipper: The photograph is the ultimate perspective picture. The viewer is outside the picture and there is a vanishing point, and the vanishing point can theoretically be called infinity. If the infinite were God, the viewer and the infinite could have no connection whatsoever, and never have any connection, so I assume that is the God that died at the end of the nineteenth century. When you reverse perspective, which is what Picasso did with Cubism, the viewer can see all sides of an object, has movement in space, and is everywhere at the same time. Infinity is therefore everywhere, including within the viewer. That actually sounds better to me, theologically. (10)
--BELL--
Maxine Walden: ornaments of the present, a wonderful image...
Brian Roop: i think we have to achieve a right apprehension of the past
Brian Roop: it's a duty
Brian Roop: not just an ornament
Wol Euler: interesting!
Wol Euler: (@hockney)
Zen Arado: yes interesting Strannik
Bleu Oleander: Hockney ... cool
Brian Roop: missed the bell, sorry
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Zen Arado: me too :(
Pema Pera: (@ Bleu: we can take the present to be spread out over a couple seconds)
Strannik Zipper: I would say that both paintings are in the present, but the experience is very different
Pema Pera: (whatever fits in the lived sense of now)
Riddle Sideways: you can take Now and spread it through your life
Zen Arado: a Cubist painting shows time when you think about it
Bleu Oleander: now .... tricky
Brian Roop: yes that's a fascinating insight, about cubism, never thought of it that way
Brian Roop: but in personal experience, now is all we've got
Strannik Zipper: A chinese scroll painting, also with no fixed perspective, allows time-freedom a well
Strannik Zipper: as
Vector Marksman: history (= the past) gives context and changes meaning in the present
Strannik Zipper: perspective=position
Pema Pera: yes, and history is thus part of the lived present
Vector Marksman: yes
Brian Roop: @ strannik, or is it the other way around
Wol Euler: mmmm, maybe
Maxine Walden: agree Vector and Pema
Pema Pera: the "eternal now" is very different from the momentary now of a point in time taken out of context
Wol Euler: surely not as a direct experience, except the experience of remembering/knowing?
Bleu Oleander: as are one's future thoughts part of the present
Strannik Zipper: @Brian - yes, both
Zen Arado: an artist spends time on a painting but it can only be viewed as a complte work with the time all there and condensed into one moment
Pema Pera: a direct experience of remembering :)
Wol Euler: mmhmm :)
Brian Roop: is any work of art everr finished?
Brian Roop: or is it that the just take it away?
Brian Roop: take music
Brian Roop: the composer writes it out
Maxine Walden: always becoming?
Strannik Zipper: even a "photographic" painting often has more life than an actual photo, because it has more time in it - a more expansive present
Brian Roop: but the interpreter governs what we hear
Pema Pera: @ Wol: when you see the face of a lover, you don't see "a face" plus "an indirect sense of remembering something"
Bleu Oleander: at least half maybe more of a work of art is the viewer so in that sense never finished
Zen Arado: music takes time
Vector Marksman: yes the view is part of the art
Wol Euler: true, but I was distinguishing between memory and history. To me the lover's face is not "history"
Vector Marksman: viewer
Strannik Zipper: Wol - for some of us it is!
Bleu Oleander: what is the difference between memory and history?
Pema Pera: but the personal history is part of the lived presence -- yes, different from "abstract history"
Wol Euler grins.
Zen Arado: but there is a kind of distiied essence of time in a lover's face
Pema Pera: yes
Zen Arado: or any old and loved obect
Wol Euler: or the Proust moment :)
Brian Roop: the fish we caught gets bigger every time we tell the tale
Bleu Oleander: isn't history someone's memory ?
Maxine Walden: :)
Wol Euler: going to a party with people whom you know from early on, and seeing your memories of their younger selves overlaid on the aged body
Zen Arado: patina of age
Wol Euler: that is a direct experience of time :)
Pema Pera: :-)
Eliza Madrigal: history doesn't seem strictly necessary ... one can connect with someone instantly in a way that makes little sense of context ... we just don't do it enough
Brian Roop: the younger part of my extended family lives far away, i only see them two or three times a year, my image of them is from the last time i saw them
Zen Arado: memories are overlaid in the present though
Pema Pera: nice point, Eliza!
Wol Euler nods to Eliza
Zen Arado: true too Eliza
Maxine Walden: agree, Eliza
Pema Pera: and yes, sometimes you can look an old friend in the face, and suddenly see the person as if for the first time
Vector Marksman: we're immersed in hstory - mostly unconscious
Maxine Walden: which may have to do with our inner perceiving lens as much or more than with an occurrence in the old friend...
Pema Pera: yes!!
Zen Arado: yes
Zen Arado: we are changing too
Bleu Oleander: see everything through the lens of our own history/memories
Wol Euler nods.
Brian Roop: well i'm reaching a stage of life where my old friends are mostly actually old
Riddle Sideways: :)
Maxine Walden: :)
Wol Euler: :)
Bleu Oleander: :)
Brian Roop: maybe we'd rather not see one another they way we are
Vector Marksman: :)
Zen Arado: we see in kind of snapshots of time?
Pema Pera: how about doing a little experiment?
Pema Pera: during the next break?
Eliza Madrigal: OK
Strannik Zipper: sure
Zen Arado: sure
Bleu Oleander: sure
Pema Pera: we can just be quiet and try to look for time
Pema Pera: what is it -- how does it feel -- what does it mean to us
Pema Pera: can we let time speak
Pema Pera: can we listen to time?
Pema Pera: etc
Pema Pera: whatever we like
Brian Roop: hmmmm
Pema Pera: makes sense to try?
Pema Pera: no rules
Pema Pera: all holds barred
Eliza Madrigal: 'just try and see' ... sure
Pema Pera: (is that how they say it in wrestling?)
Vector Marksman: I was thinking - presence has less to do with time than awareness... it is a different category
Wol Euler: *no holds barred
Maxine Walden: no holds barred?
Pema Pera: ah yes
Pema Pera: hahaha
Brian Roop: well they say no holds barred but i think here we should bar all holds, be free
Maxine Walden: my sense too, Vector
Pema Pera: all holds allowed, yes
Wol Euler: :)
Strannik Zipper: presence can seem like a space through which time moves
--BELL--
Riddle Sideways: ah, Quiet, real quiet messes up Time
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Pema Pera: I got a sense of trying to catch time as trying to ride a dragon -- while trying to be time feels more calm, like being the dragon and leisurely flying
Brian Roop: i was floatting down a silent stream
Vector Marksman: raw being alive
Bleu Oleander: Riddle's AV is like a clock reminding me that time is still moving even though we were sitting still
Brian Roop: time was the stream, sometimes it poolled and eddied, but it ever moved along
Wol Euler nods to Brian
Brian Roop: and moved me along
Maxine Walden: as I look for time, just then I had the 'voices' of each of our thoughts, the sweep of Riddles lovely spinning star, my heartbeat...all within the 'container' of time
Pema Pera: yes, I felt that too, Bleu, watching Riddle's clock :)
Bruce Mowbray: Time, for me, includes the banks of the stream and the forests on the banks, and the air around the forests, etc etc etc.
Zen Arado: I suddenly thought that if time stopped you would all freeze on my screen and if that happened in RL I wouldn;t be able to do anything - I would be completely immobile because all actions need time to complete
Maxine Walden: need continuity, Zen?
Zen Arado: yes or flow
Bleu Oleander: or does movement create time?
Strannik Zipper: @Zen, this happens in SL!
Vector Marksman: sequence
Riddle Sideways: Hi Freud, just in time
Wol Euler giggles.
Zen Arado: Ho Freud
Brian Roop: doesn anyone understand einstein
Brian Roop: or was he just putting us on?
Strannik Zipper: Pema, does!
Freud Jungsten: Haw
Zen Arado: in what way Brian?
Brian Roop: well maybe i'm too literal minded about experience, have chewed over time and space but pretty sure i just don't get it
Pema Pera: unlike the rest of us?
Pema Pera: :-)
Wol Euler: heheheheh
Riddle Sideways: :)
Bleu Oleander: :)
Zen Arado: me neither - but maybe there isn't anything TO get
Brian Roop: can onlyh speak to my own experience
Zen Arado: just our deliberations
Riddle Sideways: when really quiet, can't find time anywhere
Eliza Madrigal: :) Riddle
Pema Pera: [06:47] Riddle Sideways: ah, Quiet, real quiet messes up Time
Bleu Oleander: where is that space Riddle?
Pema Pera: that was great, Riddle!
Riddle Sideways: that space is all around and not
Riddle Sideways: read a book titled "De Here Now"
Riddle Sideways: Be
Zen Arado: time is thought?
Riddle Sideways: baybe that was when NOW becamse important
Riddle Sideways: m
Maxine Walden: This may not be in the plan Pema has outlined, but I would hope we could continue these experiments, in the 90 sec pauses, as I feel we are informing ourselves and each other from our experiences/efforts to describe time
Riddle Sideways: 'when' we watch our thoughts there is time (when)
Pema Pera: fine with me, Maxine!
Riddle Sideways: if just thought... there is no time
Maxine Walden: :)
Pema Pera: we can bar all holds, after all
Wol Euler notes that the 7am PaB session will start at the next bell, or are we running unbarred and unbeholden into it?
Brian Roop: i need to go
Bruce Mowbray is watching the watch on Strannik's left wrist -- and thinking of the song "If I Could Hold Time in a Bottle."
Pema Pera: (as Brian said)
Maxine Walden: oh, I was thinking of during the next Time sessions to continue the experiments
Pema Pera: hehehe, Wol
Eliza Madrigal: yes that sounds great Maxine
Pema Pera: nice song, Bruce!
Pema Pera: ah, okay Maxine!
Strannik Zipper: Time is, alas, what Iam out of - back to chasing a deadline (and what an awful word "deadline" is!)
Pema Pera: but unlike you, who just got up, I'll have to go to bed -- midnight here
Riddle Sideways: was thinking of the song "Does anybody really know what time it is"
Wol Euler smiles.
Bleu Oleander: time is relative
Pema Pera: time is on my side (yes it is)
Wol Euler: that could be a supplimentary exercise: collecting songs andpoems etc about time
Pema Pera: :-)
Pema Pera: I'd like that!
Zen Arado: yes !
Vector Marksman: yes - I like that
Riddle Sideways: a playlist ???
Wol Euler: :)
Eliza Madrigal: thinks 'wish you were here' is about time....
Zen Arado: there are plenty
Zen Arado: yes
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Pema Pera: perhaps all songs are about time . . . .
Bruce Mowbray: Thanks everyone.
Vector Marksman: 1/2 songs ever wirttien have time in them
Eliza Madrigal: yes
Bleu Oleander: time to say goodbye .... bye those who are leaving
Wol Euler: bye to all those leaving
Pema Pera: hahaha, Vector!
Wol Euler: goodnight pema, sleep well
Zen Arado: bye to all leavers
Eliza Madrigal: time for others to fly
Vector Marksman: bye
Eliza Madrigal waves
Riddle Sideways: bye, those leaving
Pema Pera: thanks everybody!
Maxine Walden: yes, bye all, see you next time...
Zen Arado: have a nice time
Zen Arado: :)
Eliza Madrigal: prepares to grab the log...
Pema Pera: and for next week we'll read the first Part of the Time book
Wol Euler nods.
Pema Pera: the first three chapters
Eliza Madrigal: shark music
Pema Pera: see http://wiki.playasbeing.org/PaB_Books/Magic_of_Time
Riddle Sideways: night pema
Eliza Madrigal: Oh, yes good to include that in the beginning of the log...
Eliza Madrigal: Night Pema
Pema Pera: day, everybody!