Impatient
Pendulum
by
D. H. (source)
Abstract
Some
thoughts about the reality of modern timing:
the author complains of having lost his
bearings with the traditional order and
dreams of a clock that defines the Now
connecting the motions of celestial bodies to
mundane calendars.
HANGING
IN THE ATRIUM of the Smithsonian Museum of
American History, in front of the
Star-Spangled Banner, is a great pendulum
stretching 52 feet from its suspension point
in the domed roof to the bottom of the second
floor. The 240-pound brass bob makes an
unhurried swing every two and a half seconds,
its path slowly rotating as the earth turns
underneath during the course of a day.
This
Foucault pendulum is a great crowd pleaser,
although I am convinced it is for reasons
having nothing much to do with Monsieur
Foucault, nor with the principles of physics
demonstrated by his pendulum. A patient
observer, watching the spectators gather
around the pendulum, will occasionally hear
parents discuss those topics with their
children, but the explanations are always
short and usually false.
What
is striking is not so much the conversations
but the lack of them. The pendulum inspires
silence. The same family of rambunctious
children and bedraggled parents that races
through the Ceremonial Court as if it were an
obstacle course will stand in awe at this
swinging bob of brass for minutes at a time.
I suspect that the real reason that the
pendulum is so well loved is because it is
slow. Its leisurely swing, just slower than
the human breath, calms audiences and
entrances them with a slower beat.
When
I was a child, the pendulum swung even
slower. It was longer then, too. It was
shortened (and therefore quickened) in one of
those paradoxical compromises of museum
management: People stood mesmerized for so
long that they blocked the flow of traffic.
To me, this speedup of an icon of slowness is
symbolically fitting. The tempo of life has
quickened.
But
it is not just the slowness that attracts the
crowd, it is the promise of order. Temporal
disorientation is an unwanted side effect of
modern life. We are dazzled by progress,
rushed by events, and disconnected from the
stable rhythms of time. Our technology has
isolated us from the natural cycles (day,
month, year) that once governed the pace of
life.
Anyone
who has survived a long power blackout or a
camping trip knows that the proverbial
difference between night and day is much more
dramatic without electric lights. In true
darkness, the stars become important. In a
world without flashlights, the lunar month
governs what can be seen and hidden. A full
moon allowed our ancestors to work all night
to bring in the harvest. A new moon kept them
from travel. Not so long ago life was ruled
by the moon's phases, yet today we are hardly
aware of them.
The
year, too, means less than it once did. In a
world with artificial climate, even the
seasons lose their power to regulate. We go
about our business much the same in every
season. The shortening of winter days is a
curiosity, not a serious constraint. The
patterns of rain and temperature, once issues
of life and death, are now reduced to topics
of idle social banter. In the dead of winter,
we play tennis and eat strawberries shipped
from the other hemisphere, where it is still
summer.
One
might suppose that weakening our ties to the
natural cycles of time would cause our
artificial substitutes to gain importance,
but as nearly as I can tell, these too have
lost authority. Our annual cycle of holidays
now serves more to stimulate commerce than to
regulate lives. Feasts and days of fast mean
little in times of plenty. Rituals, once our
most powerful device for restraining the
passage of time, seem to have lost their
potency.
In
the time of my childhood, Monday was wash
day, Tuesday was market day, and Sunday was
worship and a day for rest. In this age of
24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week convenience,
I have begun to lose my bearings. I fly from
time zone to time zone, living in CNN time,
out of touch even with the rhythms of my own
flesh. I have a recurring dream of a big,
slow clock in a faraway
place&emdash;somewhere empty and difficult to
reach, perhaps in the middle of a desert, or
on a mountaintop, or in a deep, cool cave.
This is the clock that connects the motions
of the sun and the moon and the stars to the
mundane calendars of humankind. Wound by
human caretakers in quiet ceremony, it
patiently counts the millennia.
This
is the clock that provides what the pendulum
only promises: the calibration of the rhythm
of life, the definition of Now. I am certain
that if I could only visit it...I would
regain my sense of time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
D.
H. is credited with having pioneered the
concept of massively parallel computers. He
cofounded Thinking Machines and is now a
Disney Fellow at Walt Disney
Imagineerin.