This whole week I’ve been annoyed at the powers to be for changing my time: now I have to get up in what feels like the middle of the night. For me, time was decided long ago, and the government should know when to leave things alone.
Here’s a note on what real time is like (the one I respond to), for those that have forgotten . . .
(On a whale watching trip in one of the channels off the Strait of Magellan, in Tierra del Fuego.)
“For those who don’t know it, I will say it now: the ocean, even when glassy smooth, has a pulse. Tatiana could not feel it, but in time, I knew she would. I felt it. I could hear the strain on the engine as it rose up what I imagined where flattened rollers that, given the slightest provocation from the wind, would not stay flat or smooth for long. And not that it showed in the tachometer, or reduced our speed noticeably, but it was there, beating, like a faint jungle drum in the distance, softly booming, pulsing, alive, as if keeping track of time, ocean time. This was the giant timepiece that ultimately told whales when to head to the lower latitudes, to breed, or to the higher latitudes, like Tierra del Fuego to gorge and fatten up, told sea turtles when to leave the water and lay eggs in remote beaches around the world, and told fish and crabs when to spawn. I figured that ocean time regulated all life cycles on earth, regardless of what it was: human, animal, plants and insects, it didn’t matter. This was the initial clock, the grandfather of them all, and everything alive responded to it.”
mt