framed

elasticity of time. 

say that aloud.  it feels good. just the right balance of s and t.  

it's been stuck in my head for a few days now, like the refrain of a song lacking in melody.  so after muttering it under my breath for 72 hours, i googled it.  i had a feeling it didn't mean what i had assigned it... (but i only half cared, hence the 72 hour delay.)

i was right.  it's frequently associated with einstein's theory of relativity and the principle of time dilation.  i had it pegged more for the strange phenomenon of time in which it can feel like both a moment and an epic all in one breath; or as if it happened yesterday, yet has existed forever. 

i was wrong too though.  upon dipping my toe into einstein's work in quantum physics, i immediately cared.  

it all came rushing back, a familiarity born of a past obsession with the film What the Bleep.  a film that came into my life at just the right time and resonated.  it's sort of a quantum-physics-lite course that i'm sure made physicists all the world round cringe.  (but this, i really don't care about.)  it remains one of my favorite films and one of the few i watch over and over. 

but obviously it's been a while.  because i read journal article after article as if it were brand new. 

to put it simply, the theory of relativity states that as an item's speed increases, time slows down.  (i know, i know, i'm oversimplifying.)  this has formed the basis of many a time travel film and sounds ludicrous at face value.  that's what they all said when he proposed it too, in 1905, with no empirical evidence.  but fast forward 35 years and what do you know, he was right. loads of studies have proven it.  

einstein's theory was based on a notion of time as something measured in a frame of reference.  i envision that i'm watching time pass outside a window, literally, and if the window is then accelerated in motion, time slows down.  and while i'm certainly not in motion, particularly not anywhere near the speed of light (which is when it starts to actually matter), i am employing the theory of relativity to explain my own paradoxical time phenomenon. 

though my body isn't moving, my mind has been on overdrive...racing at an immeasurable speed (literally) powered by life, love, and a cocktail of serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin.  and yet, time has slowed down, expanded, and wrapped itself around a few short weeks, morphing them into something much, much richer.  

frame of reference. 

in motion. 

d:  acceleration

b:  expansion

g:  power conversion