These days, when people talk about something happening “in real time,” it’s being contrasted with things recorded earlier, now the vast majority of what we see on screens. Let’s look at real time.
I began writing this on Nov. 1, the last day of Daylight Saving Time for 2025. That night we returned to Pacific Standard, which we called “real time” in my family. My Grandpa Archie never changed his clock in spring, even after daylight time got signed into law in 1966. Although my family complied, we considered it to be an urban/suburban desire imposed on the rest of us, a concession for folks worried about mowing their lawns.
Now there’s some discussion about the human costs of changing clocks, so I’m casting my vote for Standard Time. That’s when “noon” most closely corresponds to the sun being directly overhead, the time of day when we cast no shadow. No other time of day is unchanging. You can anchor your day at noon, even without a clock. Break it into two halves: before noon, and after.
The night before I started writing this was Halloween, a blessed occasion for me as I commune with the masked children of my town and their parents. This year I added a pair of Yoda ears to my perennial angel costume, and some kids noticed. Some parents said they had come to my door as children and thanked me for keeping it going. I thanked them for continuing to come.
And now we enter the cycle of winter holidays. Thanksgiving is only weeks away, Christmas hard on its heels. The repetition and continuity remind us that time is cyclic as well as one-way. But the cycles move forward and time runs down, no matter what the clocks say. My ability to prepare for festivities wanes as my appreciation for them waxes. Is that what “yin-yang” means?
There’s another time direction: back and forth. The government shut-down threatening to wreak further havoc on the lives of ordinary citizens—food stamp recipients, government workers, the entire economy balanced on a wire—is a repeat performance. So is the dysfunctional political moment we’re in, however “unprecedented” it seems. Like 50 years ago for the war in Vietnam, there’s plenty of money for remodeling the White House into a palace, with a ballroom big enough to contain adulating dignitaries from around the world, but there’s no money to hold up the broken end of our economy. Nope. You poor people, you refugees, you old people hanging by a thread on fixed incomes—you’ve got to go. Back and forth the pendulum swings.
The farmer/poet/prophet/muleskinner Wendell Berry I’ve been telling you about says that one problem with American culture is that we’re hell-bent on living in the future, an unreal time if there ever was one. He says we work for a future time as if we know what it’s going to be, as if we could determine it and preempt mortality. His primary criticism is that we pay no attention to the present and fail to meet its requirements, the maintenance of ourselves and our planet. Others have said the same, but Wendell’s way with words brings it home.
Speaking of the future, another unreal time is the End Times, which a friend brought up last week. Normally I can appreciate this concept as a metaphor without getting scared, but given the state of global politics right now, his time frame took on new meaning. With global leaders (including ours) shaking their nuclear warheads at each other, it’s possible that the world as we know it could come to an abrupt end. These are children playing with fire, and I’m afraid that only whatever fragment of conscience resides in them (and whatever the Lord in charge of the Rapture desires) will keep us from it. I do not expect it to be rapturous, or in keeping with the desires of the Lord that I believe in. So let us pray.
Real time. That’s what time it is. Time to be preparing for winter: colder weather and warmer celebrations, hard times and sweet times, culture wars and political breakthroughs. Time for being grateful for neighborhood ghouls, turkey dinners and Christmas trees. Time for waiting for the annual reminder of the birth of hope.
Real time is good time.
Trudy Wischemann is a time-challenged writer. Send her your timeless thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247. This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer, and does not reflect the views of the Mid Valley Times newspaper.
