Every Year Is Getting Shorter

As most of the few people who read these posts are aware, yesterday was my 47th birthday. It was a pleasant day— and was nearly forgotten on my part. Normally, year after year, I'm aware of my birthday falling on a work day or a weekend day, and I make plans accordingly. If at work, I could always count on a few cards, some glitter confetti at my desk, balloons, and some sort of cake or other treat. It gave me something to look forward to during the work week. But, without that stimulus, my birthday seems to have slipped to a lower priority in my mind. I was aware of its approach during the month of June, but there was never any excitement attached to it. When the last few days beforehand came around, I very nearly forgot it was about to happen— until the congratulations started popping up.

My friend Pat picked me up in the morning, and we went back to his place to hang out. He gave me a few MST3K movies as a birthday present so we watched those during the day. For lunch we went to a nice Mexican restaurant. Later, after Lisa had returned, we went out for dinner at the Elephant Bar, where I had a tasty chicken and shrimp jambalaya. All in all, it was a low-key day and a perfect way to transition from 46 to 47.

Yesterday, before Pat picked me up, I was thinking about what it means to be 47. The only thing it really means is that I've made 47 trips around the Sun. I can't even brag about that because the mass of the Earth, the mass of the Sun, and gravity did most of the work for me. I'm just walking around on the surface of the Earth, hoping to not get knocked off. (And I do mean both turns of that phrase.) A year itself is a somewhat arbitrary measurement, as evidenced by the fact that every few years scientists insist on adding a bit of time to the current year. A year is roughly the time it takes the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. So, in addition to measuring a certain amount of time, a year also marks off a certain distance traveled (even if the net distance, relative to the Sun, is virtually nil). Even this measurement is arbitrary because it too changes from year to year as the Earth adjusts its orbit over time.

If you really want to talk about distance traveled, however, consider that the sun is quite a ways from our galactic center, and is whirling about the galaxy at a considerable clip. In my 47 years I have completed the tiniest fraction of a galactic arc— and yet I have also traveled billions of miles. It's funny when you consider that no known conveyance of man could in an entire lifetime carry me as far as I have traveled through the galaxy with no effort whatsoever.

There is a further level of distance traveled to consider as well, but I'm not sure how to cope with it. Our galaxy is traveling through the universe, but I'm not sure if science has yet told us how fast or in what direction that travel is. In fact, given that we have jumped to the scale of the universe itself, and given that there are factors to consider such as the expansion of space itself, I'm not sure if direction and speed even have concrete definitions.

So, after 47 years, I have been in the universe X number of seconds and I have changed my position by Y miles. Everything else seems far less important.

Back soon.

"About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm." — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr