Time-Space Contemplations
Sometimes, especially at night, when one’s own experiences of the world begin to settle and dream worlds merge with visions, when the subconscious whispers to the soul, strange worlds open up. It’s as though tiny loopholes in ourmental worlds let our spirit slip away on a flightinto the unknown. It’s at times like this that everyday phenomena like time and space, which have remained unquestioned until now, beginto become confused, losing their sense, losing their form, possibly even opening up a completely new way of thinking. In this new realm of thought, space could be tempted away from its three dimensions; time could be robbed of its existence as a beam. Time and space would become an unendingtime-space plasma. Like a finely woven web, like a malleable tissue that extends into every phenomenon and being in the world – or even a fabric that in itself constitutes all earthly phenomena and beings.
Here and there, that fabric would have creases and folds. Elsewhere it would be more like gentle waves, almost smooth. It would fall as fabric does, presenting itself in its innocent, pristine condition. In some places, the time-space fabric would be thicker, firmer, more rigid.Other broad expanses would be almost transparent. They would be light as air, hardly perceptible in their silky softness, yet eternally resilient, always present.
That’s what time and space would feel like.
That’s how the time-space fabric would, in its own way, represent density and void, matter and anti-matter, while at the same time contradicting exactly this dichotomy – because in its presence, everything merges. The dense is not the opposite of the void. Matter is not the opposite of anti-matter. Instead, these opposites belong together. They alternate in the rhythm of time as it takes place, of space as it proceeds. As the spirit setsout on its foreign journey, seeking certainty through explanations along the way, this time-space plasma might presentitself as a vast ocean. An ocean that is eternally similar but never identical, and always one. The ocean is sometimes stirring and turbulent, sometimes peacefuland smooth as glass. Dive under the water. Swim through its moving liquids to a pool of tranquility. It will always be the sameocean. And you yourself become part of it as its element seeps into your body through the pores of your skin, merging with you for all eternity. The water of theocean is the water of your body. And so every movement of your body continues in the movements of the water. Things that are joined move each other; they move together. Percussions in the water have repercussions in the distance.
Were the spirit to return to this idea of the time-space web, it would understand that it is itself one of these thicker, more rigid points in the fabric. It is one of the thicker knots that make the broader areas of flatter weave what they are, that give theweb itself its characteristic pattern. These fine, transparent open spaces on the weave would probably be the air and the sky. But they would also be all the energyof the world as it happens, barely palpable in their lightness yet firmly reliable in their existence. They give us light and electricity; they are magnetic or electric; they are undulating or beam-like. Ultimately, their energies are wholly human, emotional, spiritual, or maybe more strong-willed; they are zestful and active, for better or for worse. They are all those energies that radiate from the web, from the living self. And just like natural energy, human energy too perpetuates itself eternally in that time-space plasma, changing it, influencing it through its very existence. Nothing is lost in this web.
Then, the Silverbeings by Tatjana Busch catch your eye as their soft, glowing bends and folds, their corners and edges, and straights and curves reflect the light. These reflections are kaleidoscopic in time and space. The light oscillates between apparent transparency and fully formed shapes. Eternally meandering cones of light behave like plumes of smoke, billowing clouds. You can immerse yourself in them, swim in them, dance in them. The presence of the light changes; it is influenced; its own actions provoke reactions in the Silverbeing that continueinto eternity, creating new stars, new flashes of light. New shadow-dances touch and move the self. It is perpetual motion, a rhythmic giving and taking between light and shade, matter and anti-matter, density and void. Everything is one.
Could it be that our night-time memories light up the day…?
Sarasota, 2011 Kat Schuetz