3. My name was Muon

I once had a friend. He was always fast ahead of the rest of us. One day, he exclaimed excitedly that he would be going away. "Where?" asked the more slow-witted and brow-knitting ones among his peers. "Anywhere!" he replied with a crazy grin which hinted at an eccentric truth.

He was literally fast ahead of the rest of us. He built me a device so that I could forever see him in motion despite our distance and difference in speed. "Just keep it tracked on me, will you? And I will know that despite it all, I at least have you, my best friend, to keep an eye on me." And so I promised him. What else could I do?

So the day came and he bid us a nonchalant farewell to mask the sadness in his heart. He did not want to leave but yet he was never meant to be with us. Not at our slow and bogged down existence. The kind of existence where we allowed ourselves to be weighed down by worrying tendencies and minute pains. No, he was meant to fast ahead of the rest of us. And so he broke into a stride and before we knew it, he was not in our physical sights anymore. I peered through the device and saw him waving in slow-motion at me. Of course I realize that this was just an optical illusion as the light waves took longer and longer to reach me as he sped further and further away. Now we would always be behind him in the real sense.

And the real sense of it all edged its hard and cold unyielding self upon him. He thought that he had to be beyond it all to be free. But what he found was that the price of being exceptionable was often nothing more than cold and harsh loneliness. And so there was my best friend, fast and all alone. I could tell that he was upset for I could see him crying through the device. His tears crystallized and rolled down his cheeks in ever-slowing shades of emotive grey. Yet the constant in motion wanted to keep him constantly in motion. And to even attempt a stoppage of his course would require an extreme amount of counter-energy. Another vector in the opposite direction with a unthinkable amount of force. Why had he not taken that blatant option up, I pondered. Perhaps he knew that it would literally disrupt his core and he would tumble into non-existence in a colorful fireball that would rupture sadly and slowly like a kaleidoscope of colors before my eyes. But I think that the truth was more simple and foolish than that. He was too proud to try to slow down.

2. My name was Muon

As Einstein put it, "time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live." Goethe too said, "it is optical illusion but optical truth." But yet, it was always simpler and more mentally convenient for your kind to believe and plan and judge and act based on your perceived reality.

I said these exact two sentences to her as I awaited her response. "But it is all so implausible and utterly mind-boggling," she stammered as she found her thoughts. "Is it so hard to grasp that all that we see and think we know is unreal? The Hindus speak of this as Maya. Look, it is just a simulacrum effect. Mathematical constructs are abstract representations of the real. We can't possibly have no correlates of knowing or perceiving the real," I answered coaxingly. "But all is that we see. Or rather all is that I know, I think. See? Now you are casting doubt on all that I know and this is edgy stuff," she then took a sip of her Mocha frappucino. Looking at the water particles edge their way down the sides of the frozen surface, I gathered my thoughts and plunged in once again, "Light is all that we know and base our perceived reality upon. We know that nothing is faster than light but yet we know that light has a definite speed. By that logic, there could be something faster than light."

I remembered walking home in my heavy suit and tried to place myself in the three impossibly unified levels of reality. Where would I be? In the limited perceived reality of the homosapiens? In the upper limits of their scientific philosophies- general relativity? Or in the lower limits of matter and processes- Quantum mechanics? And I remembered smiling because I realized that it did not matter which level of reality I could conveniently categorize myself into as my love for her transcended all and was independent of all.

1. My name was Muon

My name was Muon. I was a sentient being and was of a parallel universe. But I managed to live among you electromagnetic (EM) beings in your perceived reality for a long time. I chose to do so as I came to love you. I came to love how your kind stretched the realities of your limited perceptual field with beautiful mathematical and scientific constructs. Pure genius is what I told myself, they must be genius of a species. But of course, there were some of you who were so rigid in your ways of scientific realism. And it was this group of you who ultimately banished me from the warm existence in your EM world.

Of course I had to do certain things in order to live among your kind. I did not interact with matter as you do. I only interacted with most material in your world in what your scientist termed as 'weak interactions'. It seemed to imply that I did not possess the ability to connect on a deep emotive level with any matter or any being. The sad and plain truth was that I did not repel and attract like most charged particles. Or at least I did not do so with most of the matter in your perceived reality. It was just not my style. Thus to prevent myself from free-falling through the empty spaces in your world of EM interactions, I had to wear a specially designed suit made out of a few meters of iron. This stopped me from being muonic. But yet at the same time, wearing and moving around in this awkward suit made me what you kind called "moronic".

So sometimes I recalled slipping out of my iron skin and just existing. Since I already knew of your kind, I could contemplate and imagine your existence. I often occupied the same physical species with your kind and your matter without you ever knowing I was there. This was blissful times. I could be without judgment. This parallel coexistence was not a trick. It was not science fiction. It was just a matter of size. I simply slipped in between the room that existed within every atom of your universe. No, I never felt that I was being selfish since there was space for about 100,000,000,000,000 parallel atoms like me to live within every atom of your universe. As you can imagine, there was plenty of space. Whoever said that size doesn't matter?

8. On time- Time made relative (animals and us)

Our appreciation of time is relative and meaning-driven. When we have a weak concept of our mortality, time may seem draggy. It may drip like a stale droplet of paint clinging to a wet wash wall and refuse to dry no matter how we stare at it and wish it so. However, the closer we get to our graves, the more rich an appreciation of time gets. Every moment has a gravity to it. Indeed, our appreciation of time depends on the meaning to which we attach to a subject matter with which it occupies. It impregnates and makes time laden.

Thus before personal meaning gets attached to any event, self-awareness is key. Manoj Thulasidas argues that animals are unlikely to have a sense of time since they do not possess self-awareness. I argue otherwise since animals with no self-awareness do have a sense of time, albeit not as sophisticated and meaning-laden as we do. Why? They may not know of time as limited in absolute. But I argue that they do know of time as limited. This is because they exhibit knowledge of moments and duration of such moments with which they often need to perform and complete important biological imperatives within.

They certainly can appreciate the sequential nature of time as well since they display appreciation of key moments that lead to each other in key processes. They are also able to link and harness previous memories into cyclical utility for the future when the cycle perpetuates itself.

Slipping away

We forget. I have forgotten how I have slipped away from my craft. My craft of viscerally tearing away at the surface of assumptions and surface-level thoughts and feelings. Too wound up in living the "real" life, I have been. Finding a home, working, fighting. All this has taken their precedence over the hunger. Yet it still bites and claws at me, reminding me of the nibbling and eager promises that I have failed upon myself.

Happiness also drains away. Contentment satiates. I am feeling like the full man. But this is good in a sense. I can't imagine it any other way.

Maybe all I need to remind myself once in awhile and not neglect the project is through the mediums which most enthrall and represent me. I have to write music and write again. I have to bend and create. I will do so. I will find the time for what is time if not an instrument of my disposal?