I recently expressed my distress to Friend that there’s a dearth of comments on my blog. Come on people, don’t make me beg. Don’t force me to confide in you that the only things that support the shaky edifice of my self-esteem are the validating comments of others.

Alright, I admit, I just like to hear from my friends. I’m such a girl.

Moving on: I made two personal discoveries in the past week. One is a new item on my list of stupid talents. Along with,

1. Spinning any flat object of sufficient size (left hand only) and

2. Using my palm to suction containers of surprising weight (again, lefty)

To these I can add,

3. Estimating short units of time with uncanny accuracy (left and right brain)

Now, when there’s a fire in the kitchen, which may or may not have occurred at Friend’s apartment this past weekend, instead of standing helplessly by as Friend locates the fire extinguisher, I can instead tell her how long she took to find it. Fourteen seconds.

The other discovery hasn’t evolved into a solid enough form for me to put it into the rigorous literary style I normally require for blog entries, but being as I’m leaving the country for two weeks, I couldn’t leave without at least giving it a shot. It started when I found that while exercising, it was much easier to complete repetitive motions if I imagined that I was doing the 1^st repetition over and over. I counted my pushups like this: 1(1), 1(2)…1(435).…fine,1(46) . Imagining doing exactly the same thing distracted me from the actual passage of time. Over the next couple of days, it struck me that I do many things repetitively, and in a lot of ways, each iteration isn’t just like the original, it is the original, the only difference being a separation in time.

It reminded me of an Indian philosopher who would repeatedly purport the inconsequence of time. That’s silly, I remember thinking: Look, now I’m reading your book, now I’m not, how’s that for consequence? But I feel like I’m actually understanding what he meant. The passage of time is changing things, but not the underlying reality. Matter is rearranged according to probability, and though it’s a useful construct, a steady flow of time isn’t required to explain anything, we just made it up to help us do the math. Since this occurred to me, every instant in time is starting to look a lot like every other instant. Stove in flames? That’s ok, there’ve been plenty of other instants where that stove is just fine, I’ll hang out there.

I haven’t quite developed such a lackadaisical attitude toward existence, but I’m definitely noticing more and more of the constant. This is what I haven’t been able to put into words, but it’s everything I perceive as being outside of time. I think it’s where Jesus hangs out.

Anyway, no time for pictures, maybe when I get back.

P.S. I got a job.