time

I have been thinking about time lately.

Yesterday was the one month anniversary of my last day at FSRN, but I find that unbelievable, it feels like so much longer. The two weeks after I was done working went quite fast, between recovering & resting, and cleaning & packing it wasn't enough time to do things as slowly at I would have liked, so time seemed to be fast. The little more than two weeks since I got here on the other hand don't seem to have moved slowly or quickly, they seem somewhat uncalculatable.

My relationship with time is very different here then it was working with a daily deadline. That was one of the reasons I felt a need to do something so different. I wanted to work on projects with a totally different timeline, and so much less time pressure. The large change in how and where I am living is probably a main reason it seems like so much longer. It seems to me people don't measure time very accurately internally, but more measure change, more change seem like more time, less change even over a long period seems like not much time has gone by.

Shortly after I got here, on Monday the 1st I went into Boonville for the Day Without Immigration march. But since then I have not left Emerald Earth, not even walked very far away from the main living areas. There was a documentary film in town last night a bunch of folks from here went down to see but I felt reluctant to leave, and was tired, so stayed here. I don't feel a need to leave right now. So I am staying here where different days are somewhat different, we meet about the week on Mondays, and focus on different projects on different mornings, but really the passage of days is less noticeable. Seasons seem more important, when to plant and when to harvest, when the soil is moist enough digging is easy, when it is sunny and hot and when it is rainy. The difference between say Saturdays and Tuesdays are just human constructions, and I am ignoring them for the most part right now. Other people here do need to pay attention to them and go to work or school on certain days but the impact on me is not so great as to affect my view of time.

One interesting thing though is before we gather for events here, mainly meals, but also meetings or other events, someone rings the big bell outside the common house twice, then at the time the event is to start it is rung three times. So my skills at recognizing how long 15 minutes seems like depending on what I am doing is increasing, of course it also depends on if people really ring the bells at the right times.