I drove to the  Winter’s Farmer’s Market Saturday morning, as usual. Left here around 7:45. Takes 15 minutes to get there. Wanted to walk prior to market, which starts at 9 AM, so I did, probably the only one in Bloomington to do so, since it was windy and “raining cats and dogs.” My own dog, Scampi, refused to leave the car. So I took off down the B-Line trail without him. Went 2 miles (I walk 15-minute miles), then came back, figuring I still had 30 minutes to take Scampi out too. Asked a woman on way back to the car, “What time is it?” “about 8:50 or 8:55,” she responded.

That was the first surprise. Couldn’t take Scampi out for a mile, but a half mile would be okay. He agreed to get out of the car, though reluctant, since rain wasn’t quite as bad. We walked about a half-mile up the B-Line, with him stopping to sniff and/or pee on just about every nearby bush. I put him back into the car, got out my bags, and walked over to the market and inside. Wandered around the largish loop at least three times, with stops here and there, to buy bread, greens, Lions Mane mushroom (for brain health!), etc. Thought about other purchases while wandering, stopping here and there to talk to vendors, saying hi to several people — a very immersive experience.

Bloomington Winter Farmers Market is the oldest one in Indiana, with an amazing array of  vendors from all over rural southern Indiana.

For this past Saturday:

Finally I walked out, and over to the car, putting the bag in the back seat, climbing into the front seat and starting the car.

Started to drive. Figuring it must be at least 10 AM, looked at the clock. What? The clock said 10:30, which meant 9:30 — since the time change wouldn’t occur until Sunday morning at 12:00 AM, and I don’t change it back, just leave it where it is, as if DST, with a mental note during EST months every time I look at it). So how could it be 9:30, when I did so much, in only 90 minutes? Walked two miles, then walked a half mile, slowly, with breaks, then wandered slowly, with many stops, some for many minutes, round and round in the farmer’s market?

I drove home completely befuddled. Not “missing time,” but it’s opposite. What to call it, “expanding time?”

 

Then, on Sunday, I woke up and assumed it was Monday. That assumption lasted about five hours, during which I was completely befuddled as to how I had spent Sunday, forgetting all about what I must have done, etc. I mean, I’m basically taking three days off each week now, with very much lessened responsibilities (all self-imposed, BTW), during those three days, and here it is already Monday, and I’m still exhausted, needing another day!

So I thought. So I then, when I finally “got it,” and with great relief and joy, expanded into the utter freedom of Sunday.

I had an extra day!

Well no, you didn’t. You had the three days as usual.

But it feels like I had an extra day!

Okay okay.

 

The above story is likely boring to anyone who has not experienced such weird glitches in time. And who has not? Most of us just chalk it up to absent-mindedness. But somehow, I couldn’t. Not this time. Something is going on; and I don’t think it just has to do with me! Nor do I think it’s just that damn time change we undergo every spring and fall.

And BTW: I’m not talking about “losing track of time,” what happens when we are utterly focused and fully immersed in whatever we are doing NOW. Or, for those with UFO “contact” experience, what happens when “we are missing four hours of time.” No. I’m talking the opposite, not missing time, but expanding time. 

Okay. So then what? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Is the Saturn/Neptune igniting at 0° of Aries (though Saturn has now moved to 1°) discombobulating our usual, Cartesian, Newtonian, “linear time?” Our notion that the past is receding, the future approaching and the NOW just a blip on a screen that keeps on disappearing?

I hardly “know what I’m talking about” here. Who does?

Conspiracy theory speaks up, wanting to “nail it down”: Aha! It’s CERN! That damn Hadron Collider, messing things up!

Oh yeah, maybe so. But just think, the basic framework within which at least western humans have lived for hundreds of years, that of 3D space and time, that primary structure or framework within which all events “take place” and all meaning is measured, is, disintegrating, making room, plenty of room, way too much room, for whatever comes next.  Whatever for me, whatever for you, whatever for this town, this region, this earth, etc., all possibly on their own “time lines,” or, I should say “inside their own mutating time frames.”

Is there a “larger space” within which they all co-exist? And if so, do they co-exist “separately,” or mutually, and at least partially, embedding each other? On and on, so many questions. And all of them, if I can put them into words, as a “prompt,” can be, supposedly, “answered.” Oh? Really?

So yes. How much does this existential confusion have to do with the force feeding of AI? Turning us into transhuman bots? And is this technological revolution what has obliterated linear space/time? Leaving us where, why, when, how, and for what?

Might it be that soon, even our (themselves mutating over long periods of time) verbal languages, which we have used to connect with each other for thousands (millions?) of “years,” while at least partially “nailing down” “experiences” in a way that we can all point to and “know what we mean” — is/are disintegrating, leaving us mute, alone, all-one?

But I don’t say this with Rumi’s mystical sway. I say it on this Monday morning, with, I admit, trepidation, my all-too-human ego utterly terrified of its own extinction.