it's there but it's not

Yay! I found a tutor for my thesis! Well, this announcement isn't that spectacular since sombody had to take care of me anyway. On rare occasions however, I can get incredibly resolute in the face of (universitarian) bureaucracy. I tracked down a teacher who is in fact already retired, I persuaded him due to my hazy but great ideas and he agreed to help me write my thesis after my straightening out of the concept.

Eternal growth: Francesco Zucchi, La Primavera

After two weeks of hesitant reading I'm beginning to doubt my sanity - since writing about "time" would involve a lot of phenomenology. And phenomenologists really aren't nice people. Most of them just don't want anyone to understand their thoughts. At least they don't want me to follow them. Maybe I just reached the limits of my cerebral capacity. Or phenomenology is nothing but the philosophical incarnation of a tale called "The emperor's new clothes"... Pretending to understand things that never made sense anyway... Owww - come on, let me dream....

Eternal death: Matheus Bloem, Still life

So... time... the thing is that it doesn't even exist. Although everybody knows time, it has always been terribly difficult to define what it is. Take physical time, for instance. There was the need of a precise definition of time, so we built atomic clocks. Assuming that we have 5 atomic clock and 1 shows a different time due to a technical problem. The 4 other clocks will reprehend the 5th for giving the wrong time. But theoretically, they could be wrong too. In this case, time is given through a majority of votes. Before the physicists we had ancient priests, medieval merchants, astronomers and even popes to give us time. Difining time means the possibility to coordinate all kinds of processes happening in different places. "Possessing" time means influence over work rhythms, the flow of money and goods, and many more. Ultimately, it means power over growth, evolution, and death. More power, more money.

Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano. Early study of movement: the body in time and space

So, time doesn't really exist, but it has the power to make us ridiculously wealthy if we happen to walk on the bright side of life. On the other hand it is an unsatiable Big Eater - nothing can withstand it. Pretty impressive for a nonexistent thing, eh?!
Have you ever tried to picture time? I mean T-I-M-E; not a clock or a number, your wrinkles, children growing up, the four seasons, an hour glass or the expiry date on a yogurt. Try it. I bet it won't work. Time ultimately needs space to be grasped by the human mind. Time has to be imagined connected to an event or an object, otherwise it remains an empty formula.

How about the ultimate absence of time? Ever tried to imagine that one: eternity? Or, worse: eternal space? A friend told me that his mother comes close to black-out every time she attempts thinking of the endlessness of the universe. Well, it is a brain twister...