Monday, October 5, 2009

...or something

"graduation didn't feel like anything
it's like dying in your sleep"
A friend said that to me today, and it seemed...profound or something. Because we can't live in the past and we can't live in the future, but what happens if you live in the present?
"And what is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaaneous.
"Was there time for her life to flash before her eyes? Was I there? Was jake? And she promised, I remembered, she promised to be continued, but I knew, too, that she was driving north when she died, north toward Nashville, toward Jake. Maybe it hadn't meant anything to her, had been nothing more than another grand impulsivity. And as Hank stood in the doorway, I just looked past him, looking across the too quiet dorm circle, wondering if it had mattered to her, and I can only tell myself that of course, yes, she had promised. To be continued."

6 Fab Fans:

Aaron said...

Nice.

I have one thing to say to the character in the second part: the smallest time that matters is a Planck time, the time it takes for a photon to cross one Planck length.

Samantha said...

But that's just a human construct.

Bianka Rose said...

But I feel like that's common knowledge, Aaron.
...
So...what is an instant?
I like.

Aaron said...

It's not a human construct, what you're talking about is a human construct. Time is actually quantized, perception is not.

Samantha said...

But the measurement is a human construct.

Aaron said...

The Planck time is not based on anything human. If an alien civilization that has attained sapience somewhere else in the universe is interested in physics, they'll have the exact same unit of measurement. It's universal, unlike our other units such as the water-and-circumference-of-Earth-based kilogram. I'm not sure if I'm getting your point since I'm tired, so tell me if I'm not.