Time And Time Again

Had an odd experience this afternoon. We were rehearsing a 'live event' for a forth-coming Open House and I was assigned the easy role of audience, meaning I was monitoring the real work being done by the others presenting and producing. One of the many technical problems that needed solving was the issue of lag time. The producer pressed the requisite button (or whatever) and the something that needed to happen did so on screen, but only after some ten seconds had gone by. So I was getting a double exposure, being in the same room as one of the presenters and hearing the presentation both in real time and ten seconds later. All well and good; the old ears and brain sort of gradually adjusted.

But as the rehearsal wore on the lag became more protracted. Eventually what I heard in real time came to the screen a good six minutes later. Let me tell you, this was very disorienting. Like being trapped in a deja vu tunnel. But sort of fun, if you didn't try too hard to figure out where in the tunnel you were located.

Then this evening, once my brain had unfried itself, it came to me that for most of this month of June I'd been vaguely troubled by a sense of living through two versions of the month. In real time there was the actual June of school and teaching and in unreal time there was the june that would have been, the june like previous uncluttered junes stretching out over thirty years plus, the june of letting go and hanging loose and not being terribly fussed about anything at all.

In a funny brain-fried fashion it's sort of okay to have both.