Thursday 7 August 2008

Kairology

The Plume of Feathers in Barlaston is nowhere near as good as it's Weedon namesake - I fancied a quiet read, but in the pub; the lounge bar was closed, and the public bar was full of shouting, aided & abetted by jukebox, tv and quiz machine all blasting away. Certainly not the place to be reading 'Pip Pip' by Jay Griffiths, an extraordinary book that throws so many ideas & facts at you it itself can go at quite a frenetic pace...

It threw up the perfect concept, though. Along with Chronos, the greeks had Kairos (Choas?) - things happen when they should, you eat when you're hungry, and time goes slowly or quickly depending on what you're doing. Hence kairological time, which is very much where I'm living now (I suspect closely aligned to Pagan Mean Time) - canals, festivals and friends. I'm well away from chronological time, which governs my job, employment - from the nanosecond timing of colour subcarrier to timecode in hours, minutes, frames, to the count in to a live show. It's a fairly fundamental (and possibly obvious) part of a holiday, or travelling (at your own will), but I haven't seen it quite so well crystallised before. I've been told of another book by Jay Griffiths too, which I'll certainly be looking for at some point.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous blog...

Jay Griffiths is fantastic. Wild is well worth a read when you finish Pip pip , which I imagine is the other book you mentioned being recommended by her.(I am going to read Pip pip this summer too...)

Thank you for sharing your adventures.
x

Anonymous said...

*smiles* re Plume of Feathers

ooh yes, Kairos! Time out of time- and yes, time in ritual space, or Pagan Standard Time, not work/daily time!

Darn, I forgot about this blog again, despite your reminding me! It's lovely to be able to catch up with your travels though, however belatedly!