Earth to NBK, Earth to NBK...

Remember George Orwell's "other" novel, 1984? I remember when folks kidded that the futureworld, Big Brother state the book described was the punchline of a joke about what might happen to the country if we elected John F. Kennedy to the presidency over Richard Nixon in 1960. If the former had his way and Shanghaied the 1964 election as well, he'd serve till 1968. Then his brother Bobby would serve eight years till 1976, then Teddy would inherit the privelege for eight years, and--wait for it --do you know when that would bring the country to? 1984! Har har har.

I bring this up because it suggests something near and dear to my heart: the great ignored adverb among the Who What When and How descriptors is When. Check the news stories. They tell us what happened, usually where, and who was involved, and if space permit, how it happened. Rarely does when it happened get more than a brief mention. We're really not that concerned about time. Events, yes. People, yes. Location, sure. Even the grim details of process. But When is the least of our concern.

George Orwell sealed the irrelevance of his book with his dated title, and in our sophomoric humor of that day that I and my buddies thought was so clever, I couldn't foresee the joke would become so outmoded as the years passed. The year 1984 came and went without any Orwellian events to speak of that I'm aware of, as have most years since.

We set another date for Armageddon, or at least a year of Great Significance, as the new Millenium approached, in the later 1990's. I remember when I married at age 28 in 1968 I had wondered if I and my peers would live to see the year 2000. Lord, I'd be 61! That was nine years ago, and I don't feel any different. I look different, no doubt--more gray hair creeping around to the back that's still black, less thickness to my top combover in the morning mirror--but I feel the same, basically, as I did ten, twenty, or even thirty or forty years ago. Ageing doesn't proceed in a straight, linear fashion for me. It's more like a series of fits and starts, more of a spiral. And sometimes I actually feel I'm getting younger, like what's his name in the movie.

I was 61 in 2001 when the Times Square Ball dropped on New Years' Eve as the true new millenium began, and guess what: nothing changed then either. Not really. Not the things that count. I'm still the same, Barb's still the same beautiful bride I married in 1968, our sons have grown and left the nest, but they're still the same to me they always were.

So what am I trying to say about time? Well, I'm not Henri Bergson who held that time is merely the illusion of a continuum, that it's actually a succession of moments. And I'm not Albert Einstein, who believed time could be slowed or sped up through theoretical physics. But I am convinced that the perception of time, at least, is very changable, seeming to fly by at lightning speed when I'm stuck in a computer problem and seeming to crawl along like a slug when I'm not busy or when I'm waiting on something or someone, or watching a slow download meter creep by.

In my latest fascinations, I'm speculating there may be no real past or future, that all is contained in the present moment, because that's the location for my sense of the past as I remember, or my sense of the future as I imagine. If that were true, it would help me grasp some big concepts like when God began, if he had no beginning in time, and how it could be that some things could always have been and will always remain. Would it be possible to imagine something outside time and space as we know them? I think so. It doesn't strike me as any more farfetched that all time could exist in a moment than that all matter in the universe might have existed in a nano-speck, packed so densely light could not escape it--i.e., a black hole.

In any case, I'm getting hungry now, so that just explodes my universe theories. I have to fire up the grill. We're having pork chops tonight. Let's see now, how long do you cook pork chops?