that is not so strange - as time is movement.
It always gets back to time. Time is our enigma. It is our constant companion. Our friend, when we are young and in plenty. Our foe, when we are old and in need. We notice it most when we are unhappy, and then it plays games with us in going more slowly. Contrarily, when happy we are completely unaware of it slipping quickly away. Time is treasured, because once past, it cannot be retrieved. Nostalgia is a bitter time-sickness. But for all that time does to us, we still don't really know what it is. Einstein felt that time should be removed from the realm of metaphysics, and instead created a time that was cold and scientific.
Life is made up of events. I don't just mean biological life but also the events that just happen - a cloud moves, the earth tremors, the sun flares. What is significant about these events, is that they occur not in a pure three dimensional space, but in a four dimensional space-time, made up of the three space dimensions and the extra time dimension. But this time dimension is really a space dimension in wolf's clothing. It is time multiplied by the speed of light, which is in effect a length. But it is negative length, as light always come from the past. So time is mixed up with length and the speed of light.
I still can't say I understand this fully. Each time I try, I seem to lose the concept of time or else come back to using it as a metaphysical given. I can understand the concept of length quite clearly, from everyday experience of three dimensional space. I can apply Cartesian co-ordinates to that space, and allot to each point an x, y and z co-ordinate. From two such points, I can calculate the length from simple geometry. This length will be the same, even if I churn my chosen co-ordinates about in different ways. The length, sometimes called an interval, is invariant. In space-time there is a comparable interval that is invariant, but it is the interval between events. What are two events? They may be separated in space by a length but are also most importantly separated in time. The time separation is characterised by the travel of light from one spatial point to the other. It is much easier to write this mathematically yet I want to be able to express it in common words. More importantly, I want to give it a conventionally, understandable meaning.
The celestial sky on a starry night is a wondrous glimpse of what space-time really is. The strange thing about our perception of spacetime, as far as it is possible to perceive it, is that we are always looking back in time. Our world is always receding into the past. There, I've ended up in metaphysics again!
Fully engaged in thought, I had lost the euphoria of the morning. The journey down to the village was lost. I felt aggrieved and annoyed for letting the moment pass, but it was not the first time nor would it be the last. Since I had started on my voyage of discovery of the quantum relativistic world, I had to let go a lot of the metaphysical joys of existence. This was a necessary privation, if I wanted to understand the deeper meaning of reality that modern knowledge was revealing. The metaphysical road was certainly more romantic and potentially more rewarding, but it was the road taken by many philosophers, eager to avoid the ardours and rigour of scientific method and discourse. For them it was easier to avoid the incredible difficulties of an emerging quantum world, and focus on the human world with its desires, ethics and morality. As I reached the village, I knew I had been on two parallel journeys - one sited in the beautiful wild landscape of the island, the other in the wild reaches of the human mind.
The village was a colourful collection of buildings, some terraced, some proudly aloof - testament to a greater means than the average, perhaps the local doctor or the priest. But it was the pinks and blues of the terraces that gave the place a bright and airy feeling. I headed for the sea of colour and saw that the local grocer had a middle terrace position. It stood out with its array of vegetables and fruit to either side of the doorway. The colours of the fruit and the fresh greens of the vegetable stand, were like splashes of paint wildly thrown onto an already colour- saturated canvas. The smells of the citrus lingered on the morning air. There was a faint smell of damp earth from the fresh potatoes in their paper bags. It was all very inviting.
The space between the stands was very narrow and carefully I made my way into the inner darkness of the shop. It took my eyes some time to adjust. I closed them momentarily to ease the transition. The darkness was now complete for the briefest of moments. But the other senses were working overtime. The smells of so many products known to me from childhood, but indecipherably mixed, came flooding onto me: the smell of nutmeg or mixed spices, herbs, soaps, sweets, the exotic taste of liquorice, loaves of bread. All hit with a blast that transported me back to the memory of sweatily holding my mother's hand in Concannon's grocery shop. Now a flood of other smells emerged from the mists of my memory. I could see those long strips of salted bacon that the shopkeeper would hold aloft for inspection. I could hear the sharpening of old knives and shuddered at the muted sound of cutting through fat and sinew. My hand tightens on my mother's and I feel her wedding ring press into my fingers. The slight pain and the image of the bacon being sliced makes me cry. I howl for no reason other than the slightest hint of pain, out of terror of having my little fingers cut in half by that sharp knife. My mother tugs angrily at my hand and the grocer offers a sugared sweet, but all I can feel is fear.
I shuddered and opened my eyes again, to see the friendly face of a middle aged woman looking at me with some measure of concern.
'Are ya all right?' Her voice has both concern and worry. Maybe I am some madman who has just entered her shop on this lovely morning.
'Fine, fine.' I smile to assuage her fears.
'Just trying to get my eyes to adjust to the light and I got lost in thought. The lovely smells of your shop brought me back to my childhood.'
'Ah, I can see that ya are one of them dreaming sort. No harm in that - no harm at all. Sure our childhood memories are our sweetest, aren't they?'
She stood calmly behind the fortress of her counter. Again strangely, only her top half was visible, now framed not by a doorway but by the shelves and food cases to either side. I felt that the scene had the makings of a beautiful painting or perhaps one of those romantic scenes from a film.
My eyes, now fully accustomed, wandered around the single room that made up the shop. I realised that it was the low ceiling and the two tiny windows either side of the doorway that made the place so dark and almost gloomy. But it wasn't gloomy at all, but was again full of colour. Bright plastic beach buckets and shovels, in startling loud colours, hung from the ceiling in the corners. They were most inaccessible and were as if placed there for decoration. But then I noticed a long pole with a hook on the end, and I realised that they were easily fished out for a delighted child. The array of tins on the shelves were a pointillist display. I could imagine the painter over the canvas dabbing on a single dash for each tin, each a different hue.
'Yes, I can imagine the many memories this lovely shop must have bequeathed on the island's children over the year's. It's a credit to you.' I had hoped that the compliment would not be excessive, but I needn't have worried as the woman beamed a proud smile of assent.
'Children find this shop such a treat, compared with the big supermarkets on the mainland. I think that the magic has gone from their young lives nowadays. Everything is big and gaudy. Full of advertising and commercialism. In this shop we keep a hold of the old things. The pots of sweets with their screw tops. The buckets and nets for the beach. The children love them. You can see the anticipation in their eyes as you unscrew the lids for their sweets, and the look of concentration on their wee faces, as you slowly count them out, is one of my greatest pleasures. You see we've not had kids of our own. We appreciate their little joys in our shop.'
Her eyes went very sad for a brief moment as she unwittingly exposed her pain of loss. I saw her there barren and growing older, the increasing years becoming more lonely, the lack of little feet pattering about the house like thunder, in the gloom of her loneliness. There is no greater loneliness than for children you never
had. Perhaps it is even greater than the loss of a child, because even then you still have the memories. She has none but the memories of other peoples happiness, as their children delight in her shop.
'Anyway what can I get ya?' She has decided to get things more on a business basis - safer territory. I list out my requirements and the rest of our dealings are the normal ones of a country shop. Soon I am loaded down with plastic bags and make my way back out into the morning sunshine.
Back at my makeshift camp, I lay out my purchases neatly on the sheep-cropped grass. I am pleased at the array before my eyes. The tins and jars are comforting with their promise of sustenance. I rearrange them in groups and plan mentally how many days I could survive without leaving my lair. I had a lot of thinking to get through and trips back to civilisation were an unwanted distraction.
The provisions finally stashed away, I nestled down at the edge of the cliff and adopted as near a lotus posture as my stiff and aging limbs would allow. I took several deep breadths and let my mind relax. My eyes closed to let the soft breeze fully take my senses. There were now few sounds, other than the