Weekly Question #13: ... Concerning Mooring Oneself in Time

[Amy, Queen of Time]

I woke up this morning to the sound of my alarm and found myself completely unmoored from time. My phone said 6:30 AM, Friday. Friday? But I didn't remember Thursday ... or any of the other days of the week. Slowly, things came to me: visitors coming this evening, work tasks, weekend plans. But I was still lost trying to fit that knowledge to a calendar and a memory of yesterday and the weeks previous. Where was I in time? It's something that we take for granted, but it's such a necessary part of our existence. We measure time with seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, seasons, holidays, years. We create routines for ourselves. Our identities are tied to what happened yesterday, last week, last year, etc. But if you pull that structure out from under us, we feel lost. People can literally go insane without that structure. I started thinking of people unmoored from the normal markers of time: people suffering from dementia, people in solitary confinement, astronauts. Time travel would cause that same sense of being lost. Travel far enough back in time (or forward in time), and the normal markers may not be there: calendars, holidays, clocks, familiar seasons, a mental image of yesterday or last week. When these things are absent, how would time travelers moor themselves?

Let's assume that you plan to travel to pre-history. What would you bring with you or do in order to moor yourself in time?

[Cheryl]

I think I'd try to adapt, by relying only on what the sun, moon, and climate can tell me. Depending on whether or not I was going to return to more modern times and need to make a report, I might try to track days and months, aka a 'counting rope' or hatchmarks on a landmark rock... but otherwise I'd try to chill.

I totally have had the same experience of disorientation upon waking - but I think it's unsettling to us mainly because we have obligations that require us to be moored.

[David]

My first response was, "Oh, you had a head cold this week too?"

[Amy, Queen of Time]

David wrote: "My first response was, "Oh, you had a head cold this week too?""

Ha. No. Just me and my normal head.

[Nate, First Tiger]

I've thought about this issue a lot. It's an odd irony that someone who travels in time frequently might be the least likely to actually know what time it is. Time keeping is a local phenomenon, not a universal one. I think a population of time travelers would need to enact a "universal standard time" to work from, otherwise local time would constantly be messing with you.
They had that issue when they built the transcontinental railroad. Suddenly people were getting places too quickly. Individual time zones (in that case, each city) were no longer functional.

[Nate, First Tiger]

If I was traveling to prehistory, I suppose I would keep a watch set on my home time and reference that when I needed to figure out when to send my next set of birthday party invitations.

[Amy, Queen of Time]

I was thinking about how time travelers are often depicted artistically with a pocket watch. After this thought exercise, it makes more sense. I think having a fancy watch would be a must for me. Specifically, something like this one: http://bp2.blogger.com/_HZxjZs9ytRU/R... or any of these: http://www.sozialkartei-verlag.de/aud....

[Amy, Queen of Time]

I was also thinking of how old holidays wouldn't have nearly as much meaning as new ones: the anniversary of your first arrival, the anniversary of the date Dave got eaten by a dinosaur, etc.

[[deleted user]]

It could also bring possible problems to the time traveler. Imagine that he arrives in a place where they are holding some important religious Holiday that has long been forgotten in modern times and that the time traveler is observed breaking the most important taboos linked to that Holiday. Stoning, anyone?

[Timothy]

Time Travellers would suffer from terrible jet lag. Unless you travelled to the same time of day and day of year in same place it would screw up your body clock, Dinosaurs or not.

[Garrett]

Jonathan wrote: "Some people have an inherent sense of time. They wake up just before the alarm, know just when to go check on cooking food, etc. I've seen some phenomenal cases.

I would think a regular time trave..."

Both Michael and I have an internal clock. We only use an alarm if we need to wake before 4am, and even then we usually wake a few minutes before the alarm goes off.

Michael also can tell you what time it is, within 3-15 minutes, any time of day. He usually is very close. When he is off more than 10 minutes, he worries that he is losing his touch.

As to the questions of the week: I would consider carrying my little flat black stone with a Jaguar imprint that I bought in Belize years ago. It reminds me of past adventures, and that moors me in my image of myself. But if I landed in the time of the Inquisition, or in witchcraft crazed Salem, that might be a mistake. I think I would have to go with a small opal I received as a gift years ago. I could tell myself that time is all connected, and one can always work one's way back home again.

Cynthia (The Garrett half of Garrett Smith)

[Garrett]

And what's up with the new typeface on GR? I hate it. I like the old way. Can we go back in time for that?

[Amy, Queen of Time]

New type face? Looks the same on my phone.

[Garrett]

On my computer, before you post it is a very plain boxy type. Then when it appears as posted, it is a bolded near-cursive type. It started yesterday.

The type is the same for comments you are making as well as those of the person you are replying to. Whereas before, the previous comments were in italics.

[Amy, Queen of Time]

Garrett wrote: "On my computer, before you post it is a very plain boxy type. Then when it appears as posted, it is a bolded near-cursive type. It started yesterday.

The type is the same for comments you are ma..."

Testing on my laptop. Okay. It's the same as before. Maybe you accidentally changed your browser font settings?

[Cheryl]

My laptop looks the same as usual.

[Garrett]

Well, that's three people that say the same. I have no idea how I could have changed my font. It looks the same on all other sites. Does anyone know how to ask for help from GR. I must have changed some setting on this site alone.

[Cheryl]

way on the bottom of the page several tiny links - the last one in the list is help - if you don't see anything in that section, there is a contact link there

[Garrett]

Thanks, Cheryl. I found the contact link, just where you said it would be. Hope I can get this annoying problem fixed. Can't help but wonder how I managed to do something, I didn't know could be done, and still can't figure out how to do/undo. Life is a mystery.

[Brizo]

I use to travel a lot on business, every week a different country, different hotel, different culture, different language.. I would wake up often feeling unmoored (as you described it) in a different time zone and not knowing where I was today (somewhat like time traveling) LOL! So I can imagine going back in time, without knowing where you would turn up or what things would be there. As to what you could bring to moor yourself in time, I think a diary would be a good start (you could remember the past or present by keeping a journal of where you were yesterday. As for actual time (clock time), I don't know if the universe had not changed so much, I suppose the sun, moon and seasons and the like, are what most ancient people used to count the days before clocks were invented. But if you were in Scandinavia or someplace like that where it's light all night it might be more difficult to count the days. I wonder how they did do that in those places before clocks??

If you could bring a motion or solar wrist watch as well, that might help in the short run to tell you what time of day it was. I know my little dual time zone alarm clock and calendar were my best friend when waking up in a foreign land. And I did keep a diary, to remember things. So those are my two suggestions.

[Lincoln, Temporal Jester]

I will answer the question after I convey my story of time travel...the feeling you experienced Amy.

When I was on my Mormon mission, you are assigned a partner to be with and spread the word together they are called companions, there is a very strict schedule and rules and such. I remember one morning I had woken up and my stomach and head just were not right, I laid there a moment determined to get out of bed and keep the schedule and such. My companion handed me a small cup of what looked to be Nyquil. He tells me drink this and just sleep, I am sick so I agree and drink the cup and lay back down. I swear my eyes were closed seconds and the room changed. It was 10PM...seconds before it was 6:30AM. I had traveled in time. I don't know what my companion had given me, but whatever it was...it was strong!

[Garrett]

Lincoln, every 5-10 years, I forget how much I hate Nyquil. I take it, hate it even more, and swear I'll never touch the stuff again!

Paul, you are a funny fellow. Glad you're not in the cave next to ours though. My former brother-in-law coined a phrase my husband still uses today, "Never wake a sleeping Garrett." Apparently, we wake up a tad murderous.

Cynthia Garrett (The Garrett half of Garrett Smith)

[Garrett]

Paul, well okay then, I'll put away the giant butterfly suit.