island diary: Life Time and Small Stones

a sky photo for skywatch friday, from the bay here  -

and below, some reflections on the moments that make life, and on time.


 

One of the joys of the island time is: to go for scenic drives – not so much to reach a place, more for all those sights along the way. Today’s drive lead to a singular hill called “Ronda”, with island views that reach from the Northern shore to the Southern shore. How different things look from above, from a distance.

While driving, I thought about the memory book I started to read here, and about the curious nature of time and moments. How each day comes technically with the same amount of minutes. And now some days leave an imprint, and feel long and vivid, while other days go almost without trace of memory.

In his book “Moonwalking with Einstein” Joshua Foer reflects on memory in general – how memory works, and the possibilities to improve it. He talks with experts, mnemonics (people with massive memory capabilities), and with scientists. In the current chapter, he talks about time and memory with scientist Ed Cooke who focused on the field of memory research at the University of Paris. Here's a passage from it: 

“I’m working on expanding  subjective time so that it feels like I live longer,” Ed Cooke explains“And how do you do that, “Joshua asks.
“By remembering more. By providing my life with more chronological landmarks. By making myself more aware of time’s passage.”

*

It sounds simple. It also explains why taking time to be in a place, and take photos and notes, and the revisiting of them actually could make a cognitive difference. And it doesn’t have to be big things – as I understood it, it’s about the focus.

Small stones, I thought: taking time to really fully notice one thing every day, and note it down.

Another thought I had: the thing about moments is that we don’t have an adequate measure for them. We can measure distance, time, the worth of something in Euro.. but when it comes to complex things like focus, joy, memorability of moments, the richness of a day, our happiness  – we have no real measure for that.

Life, and its layers.