Which Brings Us To Now

“Time is an illusion.” — Albert Einstein

If turning the calendar over represents a time for reflection, it’s also a time for confusion. And what is “time” anyway? 

When I woke up for the first time in 2022 after going to sleep for the last time in 2021, we’d crossed a threshold I normally would have been awake for — only this time I wasn’t.

Either there’s been a marked decrease in fireworks around here or I was too deeply asleep, but the old year didn’t go out for a bang in my case. As if to punctuate that absence, a loud display of fireworks did break out in the area a couple hours later.

Maybe someone had lit an overly long fuse or was too lit himself to remember to light it on time.

Anyway, the main way we keep track of what we call “time” is by dividing it up into segments — work hours, meals, appointments, deadlines. We have to agree on these things to make our lives synchronize with those around us.

But then again it’s a different time at the same time depending where you happen to be in the world. So that requires additional coordination.

Maybe the hardest thing for modern humans to do is to float independent of time, waking and sleeping at arbitrary intervals, shaking up the clock everybody else is attentive to.

But that happens when you are very ill, or heavily medicated, or both, and it truly disrupts your consciousness. If you happen to be in an ICU, which is brightly lit, you also also don’t have the reference of natural light through a window to help you discern between night and day.

At that point you are truly lost to time.

When I was in ICUs, pretty much every other reference point that normally helps me trust my grip on reality faltered as well — the doctors and nurses who came and went became fantasy figures, dressed strangely and making odd sounds.

Images came and went — I saw things that are not there and mistook other objects for things they weren’t.

Sort of like one unending dream where I just kept trying to wake up but couldn’t.

I’m not saying this was all bad or all good but it was a state of suspension without a beginning or ending.

All of this came back to me in flashes as I slept, awoke, slept some more and awoke again as Friday became Saturday, December became January, and 2021 turned into 2022.

In the process I guess I missed the big moment.

Or I was just lost in time.

***

Betty White was an extra grandma to a whole lot of people, me included. I loved her part in “The Proposal” and will never forget her on SNL. She almost made it to 100. May she R.I.P.

SUNDAY HEADLINES:

• How We Make Sense of Time — January 2022 arrives as our methods of keeping time feel like they are breaking. Calendar pages turn, yet time feels lost. In this year of all years, what does it mean for a year to be new? (NYT)

• Studies Suggest Why Omicron Is Less Severe: It Spares the Lungs (NYT)

• How the Covid pandemic ends: what comes after Omicron? (Financial Times)

• What If You Could Do It All Over? — The uncanny allure of our unlived lives. (New Yorker)

• Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors (WSJ)

• Retired general warns the U.S. military could lead a coup after the 2024 election (NPR)

• Conspiracy theories paint fraudulent reality of Jan. 6 riot (AP)

• China harvests masses of data on Western targets from social media, documents show — Hundreds of projects launched since 2020 show that Chinese police, state media and the military are gathering data from sites to track perceived threats. (WP)

• How This Pandemic Has Left Us Less Prepared for the Next One — China put up barriers to studying the origins of Covid-19, leading to a conflict that means less scientific collaboration and more mistrust among global powers that must work together to head off the next disaster. (NYT)

• Emerging markets ‘leapfrog’ the west in digital payments race — Covid-led drop in cash transactions and a shift to mobile payments drive digital wallet adoption (Financial Times)

• French ban on plastic packaging for fruit and vegetables begins (BBC)

• VIDEO: Colorado Wildfires Leave Up to 1,000 Homes Destroyed (AP)

• Massive sewage spill closes California beaches (Reuters)

• Protesters call for abolition of nuclear weapons (NHK)

• He Was the West’s Most Important Undercover Spy. An Affair Brought It All Down. (Politico)

• Scotland Moves to Pardon Thousands Executed as Witches—400 Years Later (WSJ)

• Republicans Accuse Ocasio-Cortez Of Not Being Anywhere Near Place They Told Capitol Mob She Would Be (The Onion)