Saturday, August 26, 2006

Reading Hall, I've been thinking alot about time and space--how we create physical symbols/parameters for each that truly are of our own making. How is that a little black box beside my bed "tells" me "what" time it is in the morning? How is it a recipe tells us 350 degrees for 35 minutes--and we watch numbers count backwards to tell us when the pie is done. Is time-keeping a way of counting? I gave up my watch two summers ago for another MALS class. How incredibly liberating to remove time from your body.... But it's not time, is it? It's the symbol of time--they are not the same.

I have a hard time every year with "daylight savings time." Now isn't that just a bizarre statement? What exactly is it we're "saving"? Are we saving daylight or are we saving time? And are we really "saving" it? Is it saving as in "set it aside for later use" or saving it from being used or saving it from being taken?

Space is another realm to be explored. My next door neighbor and I both hire people to mow our lawns. As our driveways are on opposite side of the house, our lawns are adjacent. His person comes every Wednesday, mine every 10 or so days. Rarely does the mowing meet. So invariably, there is a nice line down the middle of the green expanse marking the measured parameter of our spaces. What would happen if either one of our guys went wide or short 2 feet? We wouldn't know what to do! Each time the line is made we reaffirm the boundary. The grass doesn't care "whose side" its on--that's our doing...

My daughter is ADHD. Her mind works incredibly fast, it's just amazing. I've always be fascinated with how she arranges things--she used to sort things by the size of the container rather than by the object's function. A small square drawer required a small square object; a larger drawer required larger objects. So a stack of small drawers may have the same thing in every drawer rather than all pennies in one, rubber bands in another, etc. She does not modify the number of objects, but modifies the arrangement to "make" spaces--really fascinating.

Art making is where I am most conscious of the illusions of time and space. When I am painting I am in another dimension--the clock on the wall and even the room that I am in all fade away. It's an odd feeling. It's almost as if I leave behind my everyday life and enter the painting itself--I am literally painting my world into being. There's a word for the time--chronos, or "God time"; I don't know the name for the space. Does there have to be one for it to be real?

1 Comments:

At 8:56 PM, Blogger cafegirl said...

Your last paragraph really resonated with me. I know that feeling well (although I don't get to spend much time there!). Whenever I get to that place/state/whatever is when I know that I've got it RIGHT.

 

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