It has been said—more than once—that time is what keeps everything from happening at once. So simple a sentence, really, but it has quite a history. A particular native of the planet Gallifrey (A well-known Time Lord) has uttered this sentence, as have other real world writers, philosophers, and scientists. Time—that thing that keeps everything from happening at once—is harder to define than casual thought might suggest. It flies when you’re having fun. It is linear. It is cyclical. It is a dimension separate from the three dimensions of space. It’s the subject of both trepidation and whimsy: often in the same moment. Time, in the philosophical and religious senses, differs from the same word, filtered through the lenses of industry, performing arts (especially music) and sports. It is a barrier One cannot travel into the past, as quoted (many times, from many sources, including the latest, less-than-successful cinematic iteration of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The high point of that movie happened to be the musical score, and the guy from a number of soft-drink commercials appearing as the Library of Congress...well...a Library of Congress hologram. Were it not for the music, I would probably have forgotten that movie: but ah, I digress...) Among scientists and scientists of a philosophical leaning, time is the fuel for many arguments, including one interesting notion presented by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in which he illuminates the absurdity behind the idea that both time and space are substances, or in possession of substance-like qualities. In short, both time and space are internal features of complete concepts. He goes on a bit, but that’s the gist of it. He may be right. He may be wrong. Ultimately, he’s just a guy who had something to say, until he died, at which point, he stopped saying anything at all. Time becomes quite an interesting pickle when one begins to consider the Big Bang: the zero-point, the point-of-origin of everything. In attempting to ascertain what happened before the Big Bang, one is often confronted with the fact that one might as well throw out the concept of pre-Big-Bang time simply because there is no such thing as time before the start of time, and there’s no way to measure any of that stuff. This has a lot to do—in a sideways manner—with the image posted here. I didn’t set out to make an image of time. I was just fiddling around between stories, looking for stuff to smear together in half-visible, shifty, twitchy, dodgy layers. I’d photographed the face of a clock, and wanted to use it somewhere. I’d used it once, but I wanted a different iteration of that image announcing 7:00: +/-38. What I came up with was something urban, something involving transit, and involving—as well—implications of both rest and motion. I liked the way that it turned out, and in a moment of whimsy, I added a simple text layer with rasterized numbers...just because I liked that vague, light-saber-shade of blue. In contemplating this image, I wonder what it has to say about time. A lot, probably. Or nothing at all. I suspect, in all reality, that once (in the morning) and once (in the evening) this image is an accurate measure of what other clocks may tell us. That’s as far as I’m going with this, because...well...in all honesty, it’s all I have time for, right now. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting...and when time permits, I will be catching up on doing the same.