Areas of Unrest

7 May 2000 - Time Is Not the Fourth Dimension

QOTD: "Politics does not make strange bedfellows; it only seems that way to those who have not been following the courtship." - Kirkpatrick Sale

Reading: Kathleen Taylor, The Hotel South Dakota

Listening to: Sainkho, Naked Spirit

Ilya Prigogine, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, wrote a book many years ago titled From Being to Becoming in which he dismisses the notion of time as a fourth dimension on the grounds that time is unidirectional. Since you can go only one way along the timeline, that makes time fundamentally different from space, in which you can move around arbitrarily.

I think Prigogine had the right idea but didn't carry it quite far enough. In fact, the real problem with time is that everything happens at once. Or at least it felt that way this weekend.

First off, I really needed to recover from the week, even more so than usual. You'd think that being in town for three weeks in a row would mean less stress at work, but I got bogged down in reviewing various documents, including two proposals, both on short notice. When I do this, I need to look carefully to make sure the contractor didn't leave something out that they'll try to charge us for later on or, conversely, that they're not trying to charge us for something they're already on contract for. If you take the job seriously, it's mindnumbingly detailed. I had a disagreement on one point with the contractor's lead engineer and went off to do some research between the telecons. So I called one of my support guys, who agreed with my view on the matter. I thanked him and said, "I just needed some validation that I'm not crazy." He immediately responded, "oh, that's far too general for me to agree to." After a week like this, the prospect of traveling the next three weeks actually looks appealing.

But, as I was saying, everything happens at once. There was a walking festival in San Jose that I'd have liked to go to. There was a storytelling festival in Ojai that I'd have liked to go to. I was interested in the Insect Fair at the Museum of Natural History, as well as half a dozen other events being held Saturday. But it is first committed to, first served and so I went to Long Beach for the 17th Annual Southern California Story Swapping Festival. Since I am a member of Long Beach Storytellers, which was hosting the event, I had plenty to do. I'd avoided much of the organizing and planning work (largely because I knew that the way some of the other members approached it would have driven me up the wall) so had agreed to work registration. I could whine about some of the details of the set-up but let's just say that I'd have handled things differently. Still, we got people checked in just fine even if it was far more chaotic than there was any reason for it to be.

I'd also agreed to lead one of the small group story swaps that are the real heart of this event. The problem was that my group was assigned to a room that was hard to find, particularly because the map didn't actually show the best way to get there. So I only had three people (besides myself) show up, while some groups had eight to ten. It worked out okay, as I just had us go around the circle with a second round of stories.

Finally, I had been asked to teach a workshop on humor. I'd done this as a half-hour workshop at one of our regular meetings and had written an article for Storytelling Magazine, so I felt reasonably prepared. I was glad that I had a good turnout; in fact, my workshop turned out to be the largest one, though that was partly because one of the other leaders had limited hers to 10 people. (I had 12.) They weren't quite as lively as I'd hoped, but it still seemed to work okay and I filled up the time. I'm still not really comfortable with teaching, though.

The rest of the day I could relax. Over lunch, Michael told me about a book he's reading, the autobiography of a man who became an English teacher despite being illiterate. It sounds like a fascinating book and I'll have to look for it once I reduce the unread stack a little. Then came the one-minute stories, which are always fun. The best was Barbara's story about how she met her husband, Ray. I thought about telling "The Crimson Candle" again, but decided to go with a shaggy dog story instead. (It's a little known fact that Gilbert and Sullivan were students of American history. Gilbert became particularly interested in an incident in the early history of the city of Philadelphia. It seems that William Penn had granted a monopoly on bakeries to his mother's sisters. They took advantage of this to raise prices on baked goods, until the city residents rose up in protest and burned down the bakeries. It was that uprising that Gilbert persuaded Sullivan to set to music. Today we know it as the operetta, "The Pie Rates of Penn's Aunts.") I always find the group reports to be boring, but I usually enjoy the afternoon concert (by representatives of all the storytelling groups in the region). This time I was too tired to really appreciate it. I did really appreciate the nap I took when I got home.

Everything continued to happen at once today. I turned down a book fair and an art walk in favor of the story swap at Otherworld Cottage and a game day at Lonny and Lauren's. I had my suspicions about the former, but it actually turned out to be fun. The group was small and I knew most of the people there. But there were a couple of new faces. We all socialized for at least half an hour in the garden before telling stories.

Then I drove down to Lonny and Lauren's. This was the second consecutive Sunday of gaming, actually. Rob had come in from Phoenix last weekend to introduce his girlfriend to us - but she got food poisoning at her company cafeteria and, while she was better, she was still not up to meeting a bunch of strangers. So they came back this weekend. When I got there, John and Lauren were playing the Settlers of Cataan card game, while everyone else was playing the board game version. I sat and read until John and Lauren finished; then the three of us played a couple of rounds of Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond (both of which Lauren won) and a game of Manhattan (which I won). The others finished their game before we were done with Manhattan, so played Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond, which is quick. Gene left and we all sat down to play Medici. It's noticeably slower with 6 people than with 4 or 5, but was still fun. The biggest problem with the game is that there isn't anything to do once you fill your hold on a particular day. If you fill your hold early on, it could get boring.

It isn't just this weekend that everything was happening at once, by the way. I've already had to turn down seven invitations for the first two weekends in June because I signed up for the Chinese immersion class. And, of course, anything I want to do on a weekday inevitably turns out to be on a day that I'm going to be out of town on business.

Perhaps I should be grateful that it's time and not space that's too crowded. My apartment is enough of a mess as it is.