At This Point in Time, Someone Will Be with You Momentarily

It’s high time I addressed this issue. Apparently until now the time has been somewhat lower. I haven’t been having a particularly high time of it, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been having a low time, because there simply is no such thing.

We’re accustomed to symmetry in English: synonym/antonym; action/reaction; timely/untimely; thesis/antithesis (all right, the Greeks get credit for that one). If there’s a high time, there should be a low one. I’ve never heard anyone tell me it’s low time to do anything, although there ought to be a lot of things in that category.

At this particular moment in time, I have to ask if there is ever a moment that is NOT in time. Are there timeless moments? If you’re selling greeting cards or photographic equipment, yes. You want people to buy products that celebrate or capture those timeless moments. But if a moment is timeless, how can it even exist to be celebrated or photographed? Will a greeting card reach the recipient in time? Are the greeting card and photo people selling us a solipsism, and, while they’re sure time exists, perhaps only in their minds?

And why didn’t Einstein or Newton or Pythagoras explain that? (All right, Pythagoras may have done it, but I’ve wasted my time and not read him, because he’s — well — from a long time ago.)

Kant had a lot to say about whether time exists independently of our minds or if our minds create time as one means to structure existence. I won’t give away the surprise ending here. Besides, I don’t have time right now to go through A Critique of Pure Reason, which was before its time. That doesn’t mean it’s now after its time. Perhaps its time has not yet come at this particular moment.

And, why this particular moment? Is a moment ever not particular, or at least specific? Isn’t that  the very definition of a moment: something quite distinct and particular? Is there ever a nonspecific moment?

Momentarily, I’ll get around to saying more about moments. As the voice on the recorded message at the doctor’s office tells me, “Someone will be with you momentarily.”

Who is that person, and will they be with me timely, or will the sands of time run out?

Once they’re with me, will I only get their attention momentarily — for a single moment — and then they’ll be gone again? I need more of a doctor’s time that that, but, apparently, time’s a-wastin’. It’s bad enough to be billed hourly or by the minute. Imagine being billed by the moment. Does my insurance cover that?

Those of us on airplanes learn from the flight attendant on the loudspeaker that we’re “beginning our landing process.” Why does there have to be a landing process; can’t we simply land?

We’re further informed that “we’ll be landing momentarily.” Does that mean we’ll merely touch down for a moment, then the pilot will gun the engines and take off again? Are we to leap from the plane while it’s rolling, before we get airborne again?

During this current timeframe, I also ask for some clarification about that frame of time. Does it have specific (or perhaps particular) dimensions? Is it a two-dimensional frame or perhaps a 3-dimensional framework? Time, itself — science fiction authors never weary of telling us — is the fourth dimension, but it’s difficult for those of us without at least a grasp of differential calculus to picture a four-dimensional frame that might really BE a timeframe. How does a timeframe differ from any other “time?” Or, for that matter, some other type of “frame?”

Or, perhaps it’s integral calculus. As a liberal arts major I don’t understand the integral differential between the two in this particular timeframe.

While we’re engaged in this consideration of time, English should allow us to say that we are — in a sense — doing time, the way we might be doing exercise or doing dishes. Plus, if we’re improving our grasp of time — hence its standing in the English lexicon — we might also say that we are serving time. Both of those phrases seem too closely associated with a pejorative connotation, so we’ll leave them to those already doing time for the time being.

There, I’ve done it again at this particular time: Is there ever a time that is not being? Ah, finally, a question I can answer. Yes, time was that things were different and time will be in which all will be made clear. It seems not at this particular point in time, but it’s high time it happened.

Suddenly I’m back where I started and it’s again high time. Is this the endless wheel of time, on which all things exist simultaneously, timelessly, and we’re all just Dharma bums along for the ride? Just when do we get off that wheel and enter the correct timeframe? Momentarily? If I run backwards along that wheel, will I recapture the past?

My time’s up, but when is time ever down?