BS: Tempus fugit

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Aug 03 - 07:32 AM

Few thoughts...

Tempus Fugit - Time Flies. Did you know? Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

I'd love the body of a 20 year old woman but she won't let me.

Time is certainly relative. I know as one who has spent considerable time at both sides of a bar. On the customer side 8 - 11 passes in 30 minutes. On the service side it takes at leat 16 hours.

And don't forget, Kendall. You're not aging. You're marinating.

Cheers

:D

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 05:16 PM

Does time compress? Yes, as teenagers every year is about 6% of our lives and nearer 7% of our memory. At 70 that year is 1.4% and it just fairly whizzes by at 5 times the rate.
Simple arthritmatic (**BG**).
Where did the years go? on the waisteline.
And the law is the Croutzfelt-Jacob Postulation that say "er .... um... I did know it... I got it here someplace..."

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 06:25 AM

Sorry janie, don't know how to write the tune! But it will be on the next cd. I suppose it's an anti-facelift, anti botox protest song.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Janie
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 08:53 PM

Oh Harvey that is beautiful indeed. Tune?

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Amos
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 07:51 PM

Beautiful lines, harvey! I could almos hear them from here! :>)

A

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: harvey andrews
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 07:35 PM

i RECKON THE INTERIOR STAYS THE SAME, BUT THE EXTERIOR CRUMBLES SOMEWHAT.                                                                  
       "OLD FACE"

MILLY HAS AN OLD FACE                                    
SHE CALLS IT HER NEW FACE
MILLY HAS AN OLD FACE
SHOWING ALL ITS YEARS
REMEMBERING THE HEARTACHES
HARSH WORDS AND REMAKES
TREASURING THE KEEPSAKES
THAT HELP TO HIDE THE FEARS
                     

YES, MILLY HAS AN OLD FACE
SMILING AT THE RETRACED
MEMORY OF AN EMBRACE
THAT WAS ALWAYS THERE
WHEN LIFE WAS SOMETHING GROWN IN
LOVE WAS SOMETIMES THROWN IN
BUT NEVER EVER SHOWN IN
A PLACE WITH OTHERS NEAR
                                                                                                                                    
IN OLD EYES THE YOUNG GIRL DANCES
TAKES HER CHANCES
WHILE SHE MAY      
AND IN OLD EYES      
THE YOUNG MAN WATCHES
AS TIME NOTCHES ONE MORE DAY
   
AND BILLY HAS AN OLD FACE
MOVING AT AN OLD PACE
NOT AFRAID OF DISGRACE
BRINGING UP THE REAR
TAKING TIME FOR MUSING
NOT AFRAID OF LOSING
HAPPY IN HIS CHOOSING
TO BE A MUTINEER



YES, BILLY HAS AN OLD FACE
LIVING IN AN OLD PLACE
SEARCHING FOR THE MISSPLACED
MEMORIES VERY DEAR
TELLING ALL THE TALL TALES
STORM WIND AND SEA GALES
LOST OARS AND TORN SAILS
TILL THE GLASS SAID CLEAR

IN OLD EYES, THE YOUNG GIRL DANCES
TAKES HER CHANCES
WHILE SHE MAY
AND IN OLD EYES
THE YOUNG MAN WATCHES
AS TIME NOTCHES ONE MORE DAY

IN THE MIRROR THERE'S AN OLD FACE
WAITING FOR THE YOUNG FACE
IN THE MIRROR THERE'S AN OLD FACE
SHOWING ALL ITS YEARS
WE'LL REMEMBER ALL OUR HEARTACHES
HARSH WORDS AND REMAKES
WE'LL TREASURE ALL THE KEEPSAKES
THAT HELP TO HIDE OUR FEARS

WHEN WE'RE AN OLD, OLD FACE
WITH LINES LIKE THE FINEST LACE
FOLDED IN TIMES EMBRACE
PROUD OF OUR OLD OLD FACE

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Mark Clark
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 10:25 PM

Well, as Groucho Marx said, “You're only as old as the woman you feel.”

      - Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: kendall
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 09:28 PM

Who's bitching?

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 07:05 PM

Bitching about how time goes by is not a pleasant job, but we have to take responsibility for it and get it done, as we're the ones who are chronologically qualified!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 06:21 PM

"Tempus? --- Fugg it."-------as Redd Foxx might've said.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 06:10 PM

Kendall,

You have posed a tempus in a teapot me thinks. ;-) As Huddie Leadbetter said in his song, "Relax your mind." The time is the message. Be happy that we have some. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, "Whenever I start to feel the least bit self-important, I think of all the dirt that never did have a chance to sit up and look around."

To paraphrase something else you said here, I don't feel any different than I did 50 years ago except when I try to walk, defecate, urinate, screw, pick my instruments and think----plus a few others I've not remembered to put down here.

Art ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 05:40 PM

I can remember what I did yesterday, it's a shame my manager can't.... she thinks I spent the day doing nothing, when I spent it sorting out 3 weeks worth of post.

I wouldn't mind but I was only off for a week!

50 years ago I wasn't even a twinkle, another 2 years before my brother was born, 6 before my sister.

40 years ago I may have been a twinkle..

30 years ago I was 8, nearly 9 and still had a brother. Summers were spent playing down by the river and helping him with his paper round.

These days, I don't let Bratling to the end of the road without checking every 30 seconds....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 11:52 AM

Awwww Janie, that is so sweet!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Janie
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 09:52 AM

When my grandmother turned 90 we had a little family celebration. She was pretty senile by then, but her personality had hung together pretty well.

She looked around at us and said
"Am I 90 years old?"
Touching her face gently she went on, "You know, I can look in the mirror or down at my hands and see that I am an old, old woman. But somehow, inside, I still feel like I'm just a young girl."

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: greg stephens
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 06:50 AM

My first car in the 60's was BDV 33C.I havent a clue what the registration number of any of the subsequent ones was, up to and including the one standing outside the house now. And, at the risk of stating the obvius, I remember the phone number where I was brought up, but haven't the remotest idea what my mobile phone number is

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Gurney
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 06:30 AM

You are a lot of lucky stiffs (likely) not being able to remember yesterday! I can't even remember what I came into this room for......

I call it 'senior turns,' standing rotating in the middle of a room going "er, er.."

Her Indoors took a shopping list and still came back short of some things. (She told me to put that in!)

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Deda
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 10:59 PM

I don't know why my earlier message didn't post. More gray matter flying off like so much dandelion fluff, ho, ho, hee hee. Anyway, I don't look back fondly on my teens, twenties or thirties -- Each one had high points, and each decade got a little better, over all, than the one before. My forties were great, and my fifties have been, too -- except that the carpal tunnel's a little worse, body's not quite as agile and responsive as I'd like at time. But generally, I've really enjoyed aging. The wrinkles and gray hair and ailments aren't so great, but life's become a lot more fun as I've improved my ability to forego suffering.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:55 PM

"Time flies; men can't--they move too fast"

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:14 PM

"Time flies men can't they move too fast"

Punctuate!

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 05:07 PM

I notice that time stretches out when you have a lot of different things happening. My theory is that you signpost time, and the more signposts there are, the slower the past time seems. If you do the same thing all the time, there are no signposts, and you drift in a non-time, and wake up wondering where the time went.

I am in my 50s and more content than I ever was, because I am less frightened of things going wrong than I used to be. But I am less ecstatic, which as Wordsworth pointed out, is a perennial pity. I wish I felt the same way about certain things as I did at 20 -- I know more about them now, but the kick is less. The secret is to take up new things: you get a somewhat lower kick, but the kick is higher than the normal run of things in things you used to get a kick from and don't anymore.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Deda
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 04:37 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Allan C.
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 03:40 PM

One of the most difficult lessons I have learned is that not everyone gives a damn what I remember.

For some reason I am reminded of a sign I once saw in an antique shop. It said: "The only one who cares what your grandmother had is your grandfather."

On the other hand, I think of the advice in the song, "Bookends"...

"Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you"

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 03:09 PM

You mean when I'm 87 I'll be able to remember out-playing Doc Watson?!? COOL!

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 02:56 PM

I think that you have to understand the difference between "time" and "duration". Time is measured, duration exists.

You experience duration internally -- it only seems like you've been "waiting forever." Time says you've been waiting five minutes. Internally, it doesn't matter that you're 87, you can still remember climbing trees and out-playing Doc Watson.

I truly believe that as long as the mind is kept active you can't get old. Even if the mind is kept active by interminable reminiscening.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: beadie
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 12:47 PM

I have always held to the idea that "time compression" , that is, the sense that time accellerates as we get older, is a function of percentages.

As a two year old, the next birthday will mark the passage of fully fifty percent of your total life.

As a fifty year old, however, the passage of that same length of time (one year) is now representative of only two percent of your life.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 11:42 AM

In my late 60s, I notice that, for instance, when I read the paper my eyes tend to slide over the text (unless I really want to understand a point). In the 'old days', I read everything voraciously. And I finished every article, every book, as though I'd been given an order. Now, I figure if after 15 pages I'm still not interested in the subject, the writer has failed me, and I'm under no obligation to read further. That was an epiphany for me.

For the rest, I suspect that it's a case of selective inattention. More things slide by now. My memory is still good, if -and ONLY if- I focus on what is being said or on the name being given, at the time. In the past, that recall was effortless.

I have a theory about why we don't seem to age internally. In a family when you see someone every day, you don't notice changes but someone coming home after being gone six months or so is startled at how someone has changed; just so in your own mind you're never 'gone'.

That doesn't explain the compression of time though. I swear time has gotten to be like a large ice cube pressed on a hot stove- it sputters and spatters and melts. Absolutely melts. Gone, with nothing but an outline left behind, and that only for a moment. I remember reading that after a certain age - or stage- the only constant is that each decade goes by in half the time the previous decade traveled. It's certainly been true for me, and it's not done yet. whooooooosssshhhhh...

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 11:07 AM

I've long thought (heck, I should stop right there) that memory cascades and branches. For instance, suppose you are talking about, oh, bread. Discussing bread can bring up moldy bread (follow the branching -- there could be other things brought up as well). Moldy bread could remind me that bread mold can reproduce sexually and asexually. That my old botany prof had never seem sexual reproduction of bread mold. That he taught a class I took called "The Morphology of Plants." That during that class's lab a whole table of us would sit around singing "We'll Sing In The Sunshine." Which brings up, "Hey, what ever happened to Gail Garnett?"

A discussion of bread mold might, at another time, end up somewhere else.

Lots of little mental doors swing open and dump their contents into the sludge stream of memory. Oddly enough, when these doors close again the little rooms are still full of what was there before.

I guess that we really are full of it. I must be, since people tell me that often enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 10:42 AM

oh, yeah...one other thing..I seem to have a limited attenti

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 10:40 AM

it somewhat depends of what you are doing...for my first 40 years, things were constantly changing...addresses, jobs, friends..etc. I didn't stay anyplace very long and there were many 'events' to mark on my calendar to give a sense of great lengths of time...

Now, I have been in the same house for 20 years and doing, relatively, the same things everyday...and the last 20 years has flown by!

But like Kendall, and most of my friends, that memory thing is the same...I can tell you phone #s and friends names from 40 years ago, but can't remember where I put the list of stuff I was supposed to remember! (I guess the early memories got the best and most secure spots of the 'memory shelves', while new memories have to grab hold with their fingernails and hold on tightly, as any little distraction will knock them loose.) How's that for a metaphor?

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Peg
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 10:06 AM

It all seems relative.

I remember reading a survey that asked women of varying   ages (20s to 80s) what   they thought the best years of their lives would be, in other words, their best decade. Women in their 20s   all said their 20s. Women in their 30s said   their 30s, and projected their 60s would also be good. Everyone older than 30s (40s thru 80s) said their 30s were their best decade; and of the older women, many also said their 60s were the bext   decade after their 30s! Interesting.

I am going to turn 40 soon...scary prospect for women, usually. But   I look forward to many wonderful years.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:50 AM

Shucks, forty years ago today I was home on leave after Army basic training. Thirty-five years ago today I was at Ft. Carson, Colorado, after my National Guard unit had been activated. Thirty years ago I was awaiting and planning for my wedding in October. And so on. Yesterday I, ah, I....

No, I can remember yesterday. Really.

I think that it becomes a matter of priorities, specifically what is a priority for *you*. As you get older these priorities change, and you recognize that, for instance, going into the Coast Guard was a major, bigtime, event in your life (e.g., you left home, you were on your own). And you likewise recognize that other things, that you once thought were extrememly important, weren't. That is, to you in your life.

The important thing is to be able to find your trifocals.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:47 AM

I certainly agree that there's a phenomenon goin' on, Skipper. Fifty years ago they wouldn't have let me join the COast Guard for a few years, but it is truly astonishing how time compresses.

I thought I was eighteen, inside, until I was forty. TI have felt thirty since then! :>)

I think the body and the self are on sort of separate time lines.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: kendall
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:22 AM

I dont feel any different than I did 50 years ago, except if I try to run.

Subject: RE: BS: Tempus fugit
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:19 AM

I can't answer the first couple questions - but i believe the answer to the last is "YES"

Subject: BS: Tempus fugit
From: kendall
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:15 AM

I'm sitting here with my tri focals and arthritis remembering that it was 50 years ago today that I joined the U.S. Coast Guard. Where the hell did the years go? Why does time compress? Is there a law that says we clearly remember 50 years ago and yet forget what we had for dinner yesterday?