Re: future past

There are different possible situations where two
interlocutors don't share the same time. The most
usual one if when you phone overseas. I may live in
the afternoon and my correspondent still in the
morning. We may even live on two different dates.

Then there is the famous paradox about the twins and
the laws of relativity. One twin leaves Earth on a
rocket cruising near the speed of light, and when he
comes back, he is only 2 years older while is brother
is 20 years older. But this isn't really part of human
experience until now.

There is also the case of the speleolog who lives in a
cave for several months, without any watch or other
possibility to know the 'real' time. The French Michel
Siffre did such experiments. He had a connection with
the surface, so every time he woke up or went to
sleep, he phoned up and told what time he thought it
was. There was always someboy awake on the line, but
nobody ever told him whether he was right or
completely wrong. After a few weeks, one could find
out that his days became longer than the normal ones,
so when he came out, his time was no more the "real"
one at all, there was a difference of several days.

I once had a strange similar experience. I went to
Northern Norway in July, the trip by bus and other
means was very long and included night travelling, so
when I got there, I was quite tired. It was a very
small place, on an island, and I knew nobody there. I
went to sleep and when I woke up, I had a quick look
at my watch and discovered it was 2 p.m. and I had
slept 15 hours ! So I ate something from my stuff and
went for a stroll. There ware some drunk people in the
(only) street, which is quite normal for Norway on a
week-end. The sky was grey, with some rain pouring
(quite normal too). The house windows there have no
shutters like in France. So I busied myself strolling,
reading, writing etc (waiting for Monday) until 10
p.m., and then decided to go to sleep. But then I
heard noise around and saw that some people apparently
were standing up. I wondered more and more and finally
I decided to make my watch go over 12:00, to see what
would happen. The date didn't change ! (I hadn't
really looked at it earlier). It was not 10:00 p.m,
but 10:00 a.m ! I had not slept 15 hours as I thought,
but 3 ! It was not night, but day ! The people I had
seen on the street hadn't got to bed yet ! They lived
in the night, while I was living in the afternoon !
The whole afternoon I just lived, I had to live once
more !

This is only possible in countries like Northern
Norway, of course, in the summer and when the weather
is bad, otherwise the position of the sun would have
alerted me. But it gives you a very strange feeling.
For a moment, your brain hesitates between two
realities, you feel just like you were mad. It finally
ended with an irrepressible laughter.

All this to suggest that one might think of
possibilities to express different simultaneous times
in a language. Both interlocutors don't absolutely
have to share the same time, there are cases where
one's future is the other one's past, for ex. I read
somewhere that a question like "where are you now ?"
makes sense, while "when are you now ?" doesn't. Well,
in some cases, I think it does.

--- Dan Sulani <dansulani@...> wrote:
> On 13 June, Sally Caves wrote:
[discussion about future]


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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