Chi-time and your time

So it is currently 11:56 PM in Chicago. If I were a betting man I would bet that equals out to just about 9:56 PM L.A. time. But I am not so sure...

Time passes differently as I get older. It is neither faster nor slower. I simply regard hours differently. I am now well-acquainted with 7:07 AM and 9:00 AM when I was, once upon a time, a fan of 2:02 PM and 1 AM. Little things like this tells me that time is passing. And Charles Mingus is playing something from Tijuana Moods. And the rain has died down and the humidity, for a brief change of pace, has ebbed a little. Where it's gone to I don't know.

Today I found twenty dead flying ants, and one live beetle, in my mailbox. No mail for me but Alex received something from the public library. Alternately disgusting and mundane things like this seem to define my life lately. Once upon a time college was starting. Now, after a time, it is nearly over. As Hunter S. Thompson might say, "Strange musings in this godless place..." weird and savage tales of atavistic romance and perpetual indigestion. Onions and scrambled eggs... bloody marys and meat pasta. All diabolical and weird. Strange rumblings in the gray and impotent sky. Malarkey!

All I know is this: it may be 12:02 AM here, or 10:02 AM there, but it cannot be both. I would postulate that it is, in fact, neither. What time is it, then? A very good question. But I had a dream last quarter that I was floating down a river inside a greenhouse and asked, very suddenly, if anybody really knew what time it is. And the people by the river sang back, in the manner of the band (ironically named) Chicago, "does anybody really care?"

And then I woke up. Or at least I dreamed I did.