Time waits for no man….just slows down apparently.

The gaze upon the stilt passing so near to the kite was unexpectedly diverted to the base of the tree, where movement had suddenly caught my eye. It was then that the strangest effect we experience as humans, and often used effectively as a device in film to emphasise the moment, occurred. Time changed. Drastically. Time completely altered to what we normally expect. Time broke all the rules of everything we had been taught (well, taught later in high school). And this wasn’t the first time for me, but it was certainly the most pronounced I had experienced in my early years.

I will go back for just a moment to the March 31^st entry (re kites) and more importantly the real entry for April the 1^st. There were mitigating circumstances, but the punishment has already occurred so that cannot change anything, it is in the past…. And you can’t mess with time? .....mmmmmmm? I will just mention that ‘The group gathered at this incident ‘all had our parents permission to attend the park’. And as mentioned, those present were all gathered safely behind me, the caber-stilt tossing aeronautical mathamatician, who was about to fail his basic safety check. Horribly fail. Regardless of any excuses. Shot down in his moment of brilliance (I am referring to the actual idea of using the stilt to ‘nudge’ the tangled kite from the tree). Shot down as rapidly as the stilt having reached the moment of apogee, was now returning to the earth with all the appropriate consideration towards Newtonian physics and the general natural effect of gravity. Because gravity existed before the law was discovered, lets be honest about that.

And the time existed before the laws explaining it as well. So, time decided what happens next. Right now as the stilt began its return and my vision was drawn to the base of the tree, time shifted its gears. All of them. Like an eighteen-wheeler truck as the driver approaching the first slow corner after five hours of straight driving on the Nullarbor Plains. Time went from normal and wrenched itself down through the gears to the slowest of possible moments. I’m sure everything happened as normal. At the ‘normal’ speed, unless everyone in the world, whatever they were engaged in, at the exact same moment as we witnessed this specific incident, discovered time slowing down. Five billion people (I think that was the population of the world back then), experiencing a shift in the fabric of the universe. Time. Really slowing. Creeping in fact. A mere dawdle across the canvas of a part of a minute. But I don’t recall any news reports. No major world headlines. It was I am sure in my head and everyone else’s there watching. Staring, Eyes drawn to the base of the tree.

(continued tomorrow)