I missed posting this prior to, or at the exact point of, the Vernal Equinox which occurred at 11:02 GMT today. This is due to the fact that, these days, we have no time whatsoever to spare here in Moore-Reppion Towers. Of course, time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. And I’ve just had my lunch.
Some philosophers argue that there is only the Specious Present – the GIF-like mini chain of events which we experience as “the now”. The past is merely the recollection of those spent moments, while to speak of the future is mere speculation upon perceptions as yet unperceived.
Physicists on the other hand, speak of the chronon, and of Planck time (Planck time being a universal quantization of time itself, whereas the chronon is a quantization of the evolution in a system along its world line and consequently the value of the chronon, like other quantized observables in quantum mechanics, is a function of the system under consideration, particularly its boundary conditions).1
Warren Ellis posted a thing on his site last month entitled Boiling Spacetime: How Time Works In The Graphic Novel about how time in comics is completely elastic. Indeed, different time-streams can run simultaneously on the same page in comics (there’s a bit in one of the earlier League books, for example, where a fight occurs right to left on a normal left to right page, meaning that the participants are moving backwards in time).
Right now it feels like we exist in two separate time-streams here. We have workplace time and home/family time, and they’re running simultaneously. As I’m typing this the rest of the house buzzes around me in fast forward, the hands of the clock spin with sickening rapidity. For Leah, who is in the other room with two 9 month olds, time moves more slowly. She can hear the tick of the clock. She can see how bloody long this is taking me. It will be the same when I eventually finish this blog and go and take over with the kids and she comes in here to finish typing the latest Damsels script2; time will fly for her and I will feel every second of it. But I still won’t have enough. There is never enough time. Never enough to do the dishes, to work up that proposal, to sort out those house repairs, to finish that script, to enjoy the progress of the kids. Time is tight, time is the enemy, and it’s ticking away too fast in both Moore-Reppion time-streams.Send more chronons!3 Please.
Oh, and don’t forget to buy Damsels #6 today.