what is time

just got back from dropping my mother-in-law at the airport. her 6:00 a.m. flight turned into a logistical nightmare on account of the plane needing a spare part and none was to be found. luckily this happened while she was still in town and not on some connecting flight elsewhere otherwise she'd have spent the 18 plus hrs waiting for the midnight plane at the airport.

on the way to and from the airport i tuned the dial on the satellite radio to the '50s station. marvelous tunes by bobby rydell, little eva and the platters were among the selections. i like early rock&roll, a lot, esp. rockabilly. the sounds are raw, stripped, filled with sexual desire. they are in my mind timeless.

in the world of pop culture anything over 50 years old is ancient and lost any relevance. but is that so? currently there are bands that are mining '50s song structure and harmonies, such as the raveonettes from denmark. and in the world of poetry writers such as jimmy the jam schuyler, frank o'hara and countless others are read and emulated as if they were writing today.

certainly my mother-in-law wouldn't think of the platters as being old. she was a teenager in the '50s. that is part of her own history and currency. and tho she might tell you that she is older she certainly wouldn't say she is old.

what pray tell does time mean anyway? not that i really give a shit when i can listen to a voice as angelic as roy orbison, where a piece of orbison lyric recently found its way into a poem of mine, and that voice transcends time. or does it?

james dickey wrote, my life is made of the world / i will do what i can. i suppose that is all i can do and ask a little of the same of others. things do age and some age badly, like people, ideas, trends, and so forth. perhaps what i'm seeking is a level of cool, fonzie-type cool, and cool is timeless, however we wish to define it. i also think that we live in a continual present. and the shallow trappings of pop culture are available to take and discard as we wish because as thom gunn wrote, we are all the same in different ways / we are different in the same ways. at least i hope we are and that finally time is what we do with our these our lives.