At what I assume was about four in the morning (and sober no less), and apparently in an intellectual mood, I scribble out an interesting stream of consciousness regarding the nature of time. Go figure. I like what I said though, so here, for your enjoyment, are my metaphysics of this morning:
forgive my formatting, my brain runs like an e. e. cummings poem some times

I digress, to here…
Ha! but from where?
For to digress to somewhere I must have started somewhere else originally
There's the rub.
I started with almost nothing
and though now I am in a different place, I still have next to nothing
and dusty nothings are where I would like to end up
so I have not digressed after all….
transgress? transcend? transpose? transpire?
times like this, I need a better card catalogue of my words
my ramblings get all twisted up in these floating sort of romantic syntax and odd word choices
too much Shakespeare I suppose, has affected my speech
maybe it's not affected, but instead, afflicted
ah! but to be afflicted, one needs some sort of affliction
So once again, nothing adds up.
My word-mind-calculator is adding dollars and not getting sense.
Maybe if I give it a chance it can work itself out.
I'll just sit in this moment with it.
The it of the moment at the very least

time is not a spiral!
It's a soap bubble machine (hey, at least it's clean)
each little IT has it's own moment
it's own bubble
ok I know it's corny and obvious seeming
but it's more than what I can explain
like if your soap bubble time machine's bubbles
were made half of soap and half of Christmas tinsel
and they were all........ twisted together (with a rhyme pattern mind you)
into some big......... shifting sort of flying macramé braid thing
try to pick out your individual pieces now
there is no way
except.....
except for when you are sitting inside it (one of the bubbles that make “it” up)
and at that point, it is hard to tell your relation to the rest
the old ones and the coming ones
some sort of a Christmas soap helix thing
could get anyone confused
there are few true distinctions
divisions
singularities

or I could look to my dear term paper subject and friend
Mr. Percy Shelly for an examination of time in a more romanticized sort of language

Time:

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?


But still nothing can work because I am trying to use words to explain these things
a rose is a rose is a rose
if we called it "snarflefoof" it would be the same damn thing
and a snarflefoof to me might be entirely different than a snarflefoof to you
but I'll trudge on, tossing my words along the ground as I go
there's a method to this here madness, even if nobody can see it
patterns patterns patterns
words are patterns
you know we don't even really read things anymore
that's what they mean by "learning how to read'
embedding the symbols in your brain
and the phonetics combined with the ways they go together
make us "read"
but we aren't actually reading and registering every letter for its own self
we put them together and acknowledge them at the same time
certainly time-saving
patterns...
words are patterns
time is patterns
understanding is…..?

Ah! back to a new beginning:
words
more like
cubby holes
filled with odds and ends
what you put together yourself
and what you get
when you reach in a hole
is only what you put in
and our cubbies may be different
and ever changing
but never complete
put ourselves into words
words are patterns
so (for the sake of curious arguing)
ourselves are patterns
pattern isn't the perfect word however
not pattern as in repetition
pattern as in......... ugh
something kind of different

Time is constant
I am in a bubble here, a bubble there
I can see *MY* big picture but not *THE* big picture
I know where I am, I can remember where I have been
but when I am where I am I cannot *see* where I have been
I cannot ever see the helix thing as a whole
even if it is shimmery and glorious it is not so tangible as I have been describing
I am here, and then there, and then somewhere else
I am the center of the universe
the only universe I can know is the one in my bubble
I may *know* that I am not the literal center of the literal universe
but my time runs in my bubble for me
I cannot control it
but it is all I can ever know
even people in the same bubble are never, *really* in the same bubble
a Venn diagram of sorts
never entirely whole
never entirely one
I am here
I am there
I am everywhere
I am time
I am nothing at all
But I think I like all that
Yeah, those concepts feel fuzzy like warm seltzer water

One day I'll run out of time – we all will.
And in different ways than the most readily obvious ones.
but you will not be conscious of it happening
you won't be conscious of all the opportunities that you had but didn't know
both of these things, though, are irrelevant
that's true
but I meant that when your time runs out you won't be conscious of it happening
It'll happen though.
And I don't mean in some deterministic, "oh geeze, you know we're all gonna die sometime" way.
Not even. Don't underestimate me.
When it does "run out" however, you will not know anything else from and including that moment on as far as *to know*
in the same sense
the same 99 sense value meal as my knowing is now
not that I know anything now beyond this, considering I can't even make a complete sentence
will you still respect me in the morning?

this no longer knowing when time runs out thing -
it's moot
it won't matter to me then
it matters to me now…………