“I arrived this morning and walked on the grass still wet with dew. I found buttercups growing. See?” He held up a flower which had a single stem that branched into two smaller stems, and at the end of each smaller stem shone a small bright yellow blossom, like a bloom of sunshine.
“Like you, I study cosmology,” he said.“You see, when the universe was created, time was created—there was no ‘before’ or ‘after’.” He pointed at the main stem. “So time was just a part of the universe, like this stem (of a flower). Time is nothing but the path from the root to the blossoms. Time grew.” Then he drew a line in the air between the upper stems. “And space is the path from stem to stem, from blossom to blossom. Space grew.”
What have I been doing for the past 5 months? Good question. I have been traveling, seeing, experiencing, connecting, reconnecting, loving, evolving, exploring countries, people, cities, situations, ways to travel, cuisines, emotions, bodily feelings… IT FEELS EXHAUSTING!
If you thought that traveling is easy, fun and worry free, Oh, how wrong could you be! I know and recognize that I was wrong too! Not just about the “ease of travel” but about pretty much everything else related to the “ease of travel”! No, this is not a “yet another travel” piece! This is not a “do not go traveling” piece either! It’s just a collection of experiences put together by time, in a very organic way.
I am currently in a train, in Romania, reading an eBook, uploading a theme to a website I’m building, and all these thoughts about the past 5 months just started flooding in. The phrase that started this whole writing thing this time was very simple in its logic, but nonetheless touching upon many layers of consciousness. The Ebook in question is “The Buddha Lectures on Cosmology” by Dana Paxson, where he states, in a very blunt way that the universe is an expression of time, and time is what we need to go between the beginning and the end of anything! The universe “grows” because, well, why not experience growth? I think…
So the short answer to what I’ve been doing for the past 5 months is growing my universe, expanding my universe through the use of time.
Thing is, we’ve all been doing this our entire lives. We’re expanding our universe through the use of time. And time is –wait for it- what happens on our journey from our birth to our death, from point A to point B. Time is our path, our story, our way…time cannot be without space. Right? I really mean it. Is this right? It feels right to me, but I am not a scientist, and not even a “couch scientist” at that, so that’s why I’m asking. I have been “creating” my universe through the incursions in my physical space + time. So, my universe=my beginning space + time; space growing, with time, and time=the distance between points in the universe. I like this. It seems logical to me.
Now, as I am using time to travel between 2 points, I am amazed at the beauty of this universe created by time and our excursions in space-time.
It’s humbling, it’s awe inspiring, it’s so simple and so beautiful this universe of ours.
Now go create your own.
But where does this leave the oh so poignant questions of time-travel? Another postulation (LOL) on this subject at a later time.
Monica Antohi
Monica Antohi 
Dear Monica,
I was quite pleased to see your mention of that Buddha story of mine! I’d been Googling references to my stuff, and there it was, on your blog. Your entry urged me to take a look at those three paintings of yours, and I’m impressed at their sensitivity and color-expressions. My training as an abstract artist back in the 1960s awoke once more – I do some graphic design and digital imaging now – and your images reminded me of Mark Rothko’s work.
It can be difficult living with one’s vagabond mind. My wife puts up with me better than I do. No matter how I permute everything, fitting physics, poetry, mathematics, art, fiction, and programming into one head is a lot of work. I sense that you have some understanding of this, and I enjoyed seeing your work here.
With warm best wishes,
Dana Paxson