Airport Ponderings

Time, as perceived by waiting for my plane

How can time be composed of instants that are by definition time-less? All of eternity seems to hide somewhere in a moment, between now and now, and now again. 

More than one hundred whole years have passed since the famous Bergson-Einstein debate on time, yet what have we truly learned on the subject? You may have guessed that time is on my mind. Why? Because I’m at the airport, waiting for my flight. Four hours left until boarding. Why, especially in Switzerland where the very notion of objective time was, in a way, created, did I decide to get to the airport early? Planes don’t depart early. There are delays, there are cancellations, but never has a plane departed early. So why am I so early? Don’t answer, it will only piss me off. I feel like a Longjumellian from Léon Bloy’s story, one of the inhabitants who amassed all types of trinkets: globes, atlases, train schedules, and suitcases, and dies without ever hav­ing left the town where they was born. Will I ever leave this seat, in which the outline of my backside has trapped me within its malleable fabric?

Nothing quite makes you question the very fabric of reality as much as waiting. It brings Zeno to mind. A moving body at point A will not be able to reach point B, because it must first cover half of the distance between the two, and before that, half of the half, and before that, half of the half of the half, and so on to infinity. A small experience of airport Hell. 

What has crafted this vendetta against boredom? Is it truly so terrifying, so terrible to spend a handful of hours with oneself? Where does my constant need for distraction come from? Great question for another day, for now I’ll continue watching a woman build herself up in t-shirts, sweaters, a pair of sweatpants over her jeans, something that looks like a bodice (?), and a jacket. Layers of onion skin, so to speak, until the last trace of her womanly figure has fully disappeared. 

While I wrote that last line, and during the short interval between getting to the airport too early and my hair still being blonde, and now, when it is starting to gray, the overhead speaker indicated that my flight has been delayed by another hour. I’ve already reminded myself of my privilege, I know I am lucky to go on holiday. I know. But I also ate my last snack about thirty minutes ago without thinking of the future, and the closest Kiosk is a 10 minute walk, which isn’t so bad if I wasn’t, as I said earlier, stuck to my seat. 

Alright, let’s talk about the aforementioned debate, shall we... Just 102 years ago (102 years, 135 days, 2 hours and thirty-six minutes at the time of writing this sentence. Time is, after all, of some importance here) Bergson and Einstein debated the nature of Time. Einstein was of the opinion that there were only two types of “time” — physical, the one measured by clocks, the thing ticking away so slowly on the departures screen before me, and psychological time, subjective and personal. To Bergson, contrarily, time was the lived experience of duration, where past, present, and future interpenetrate and weren’t separate. He also introduced the concept of “durée” (duration) to describe time as it is experienced subjectively by our consciousness.

Though most of us only know Einstein, Henri Bergson was the more famous of the two back when this debate was held. How incredible is it that our current perception of time is significantly shaped by a single debate, a mere difference in perception. A perception that changed all of our perceptions of time to follow. And because Einstein was the clear winner that day, we hardly remember Bergson today? We live on in Einstein’s time, long after his death. If Bergson won, perhaps I’d already be on my way to Portugal.

One-hundred-something years have passed since then, the dim street lights of former times have been replaced by electric lights just like The Comet has been replaced by whatever plane will take me to Portugal (hopefully not a Boeing). Yet I’m still waiting. No wonder I prefer Bergson.

Finally sitting in my seat, number 3C (I’m not showing off, this is an EasyJet), but the plane’s wheel fell off which means more waiting. 

Two hours have passed. Two.

I’m hot. Not aesthetically.

I’ve looked through all the Leonora Carrington paintings on Pinterest. Once again I am reminded that art can bring us consolation but it is powerless against reality.

We are off! The person seated next to me said there’ll be a full moon tonight. She seems to think it has something to do with the delay. Really, I don’t care either way, I’m just typing away on my phone so I don’t have to make small talk. Funny, I started this by saying I hated boredom because I’m scared of spending time with myself, but the thought of three hours of conversation with my seatmate scares me much more.