The Acceleration Effect

Sunday. Not exactly a day of rest. Finished correcting some homework, played some Bach recorder/piano sonatas with our virtuoso recorder teacher, had brunch at Jeffrey’s, our ritual restaurant. From there, rented electric bikes in Carmel with my good friend Estevao and we whisked around the 17-mile Drive and back, enjoying the brisk fog-tinged air, the characteristic Monterey cyprus and pine trees, the fresh feel of the ocean. Returned late afternoon for a short swim and cornhole with one of my students, who claimed he had never played— and beat me 21 to 1 the first game! Just for the record, I beat him 21 to 3 the second game, we were tied at 17-17 the third game and then I won. But hey, I’m not competitive!:-)

 

A hearty lasagna dinner with six Spanish-speaking men and a pleasure to exercise both my Spanish and social muscles. Love these guys! And then showed a movie in the theater here, Bela Fleck’s Throw Down Your Heart. Interesting that after reflecting on the pacing, editing, range of emotion, variety in my own Secret Song film that I felt critical of this film’s editing. But still a good story with fabulous music.

 

Back to my room to gather the notes from the first week to load into Google Classroom for the students and prepare tomorrow’s classes. Before dinner, we had a faculty dinner going through the details we need to attend to in each of the remaining five days and it struck me as it always does how fast this second week will go. Some law of time that the first three days or so of a course or a vacation in a new place feel like a lifetime and then everything accelerates and before you know it, boom! it’s over. Has any scientist studied this phenomena?

 

Not a happy truth as often look back at something that happened that felt it was recent and was actually 12 years ago. Then I add 12 to 72 and think that these years will go yet faster and it’s not a happy math equation. I wonder if as Ram Dass aged whether he was able to stick with the practice of “Be Here Now.” I am fully here now and love both the here and the now, but am less thrilled with how quickly those nows will keep rolling into each other.

 

But nothing new here. The same astonishment all aging people feel— where did all those years go? Meanwhile, tomorrow’s another day.