20160201 (arrow of time)

Telling someone where a thing is

Is fairly simple: Apt B, 123 G Street,

Somewhere City, OH. The example

Leaves something out and it’s not 

The ZIP code. “Between the hours

Of 11:00 PM and 9:00 AM most

Weekdays, as she often spends

Weekends with her Aunt Paloma,”

Nails it a bit better but the police

May want to know exactly where

She was at 4:36 AM on July 20,

2013. Namely, was she in the blue

1999 Pontiac when Sam “Punkie”

Webster shot and killed his drug

Dealer? For all we care she might

Have sat in that car all her life 

Except for the hour between 4:00

And 5:00 AM and no one would 

Care. Everybody’s free to wander

Through Punkie’s car hour by hour,

Like the queue lining up to see

Shamu at Sea World. But at the

Precise time when shots rang out

Terminating the sales career of

Punkie’s pusher only one woman

Was next to Punkie and his gun

Who could testify it was indeed

Punkie who sold him the farm.

If it’s the dicks looking for a 

Person they want an answer 

That includes the x, y, and z,

Axes and the time the person

Was at those x, y, and z axes.

In fact depending on how you

Construct reality, without time

Changing, we’d all be stuck

Exactly where we are unable to

Change places or even to lift 

A finger. Some nit-picking

Philosophers like Zeno deny

That motion occurs, but we 

Won’t get into that today. For

Now we’ll agree the motions

We observe are possible.

So whether the motions take us

Further x or higher y or deeper z

Nobody takes us earlier T although

Everything moves to later T at

The same rate. Ever since Sir Arthur

Eddington, British astronomer, ca.

1927, named the observation the

Arrow of Time, although practically

Everybody from Ugg, the first

Bootmaker to Punkie the cokehead

Of recent memory had come to

The same conclusion (so much for

Being first—you have to name the 

Damn thing), time as we all 

Experience it moves only in one

Direction. Physicists, cosmologists,

And psychologists have had a field

Day with this banal discovery and

Several good science fiction authors

Have been well paid to dwell

On the ramifications. I will spare

You the major topics and state

That although all physical laws

Can work in reverse as well as

Forward, time appears to move

Only forward, yielding as it goes

Greater and greater entropy . . .

Not a substance, like butter or

Hydrogen, but an overall measure

Of order and disorder in the

Universe. But, wait, there’s more.

Everything goes to greater disorder

Except for the paradox of evolution,

In which things of greater and 

Greater “order” or “organization”

Complex molecules, eventually us,

Thoughts, ballet, words, stories,

Take place in the midst of processes

Delivering the usual entropy—heat,

Motion, etc., without fail. And without

So much as a flick of the wrist

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J,

Almost comically upended 

The Darwinian atheism of the 

Late nineteenth century.

c. J.S.Manista, 2016