White Nights of Relative Time

Simona Mihalca

Alas, the number of times I have heard that Time is Relative. It does not get
any truer every time someone quotes Einstein. It does not get any deeper when
someone creates philosophies about it.

Yet, the reason it is always present is because of our extremely limited

understanding of time. We cannot name what it is. We cannot control it, even
though the observance of its passing just a social construct created.

Even if you cannot really grasp the details of time, we can observe it. The sun
rises in the morning, showering the world with light. The evening gets colder and
darker, only to turn into pitch black night. Simple enough, or so I thought, in my
ignorant position in central Europe. I always assumed that I could tell the time by
looking outside, seeing where the sun is. I thought my body was just that smart
and it had developed a rhythm accordingly. Science backed me up, describing
the circadian rhythm as our internal clock, the 24-hour physiological process
that tells us when to sleep, to wake up, to eat. Back in 1972, Moore RY and
Eichler VB published a study on circadian rhythms in mammals. It pinpointed
their existence to pacemakers in the brain, which are made out of thousands of
neurons, which group in structures called the SCN or the suprachiasmatic nuclei.

Imagine my surprise when, upon visiting St Petersburg, I discovered it was not

like that at all. Surely enough, I had heard of the White Nights of St Petersburg,
but actually experiencing a midnight that is filled with light is a strange
experience. What are they exactly? Beginning with late May and going towards
early July, the nights in St Petersburg get flooded with light. The White Nights, or
Beliye Nochi, are an extraordinary phenomenon that appears in St Petersburg.
As one could imagine, it is due to the citys very northern position, at 59 degrees
57' North. It is similar to that of Oslo, Norway. At that latitude, the sun never goes
under the horizon enough for darkness to appear.

When you wake up in full light, feeling refreshed and ready for a new day. You get
up, ready to meet the world. Then you check out the time and its 5:30! Betrayal!
How could it be that early? How could you have gotten up so early. Betrayed by
your own body. Or am I? Looking back to cold hard facts, we immediately find
that, actually, exposure to light early in the day (at dawn) advances the onset of
activity in humans. Conversely, by being exposed to light late in the day (at
dusk), ones onset of inactivity is being delayed. (Derk-Jan Dijk, Simon N. Archer,
2009)

The day passes, you visit and visit, get tired. You make your way back to the
hotel and get ready to call it a day. Its 11PM and light is still everywhere. You
reconsider everything you thought you knew about time and nature. Now its
1AM. As I was writing my project due the next day, I began to contemplate on
the nature of time. It was still light outside. In that moment I realised just how
little I knew of time and how limited a perspective mine is. Time can move
differently for different people, but you never think of it. Time shapes
civilizations, both in every point of their history and throughout it.

What if timed moved differently for you? How would you community or society
be different if you had those 80 days a year of never-ending light. Sure enough,
you would save some money on electricity. But what about how that shapes you
as a human? How you expect to stay up late? To create beautiful poetry and
music enveloped in this light? It could make you a completely different person. I
wished to say day after day, but even that saying loses some of its meaning.
Light and dark determine one day, but determine it differently. Time affects us at
every point.

What a treacherous beast time is! How hard it is to rise and how easy we fall. You
walk among cities that are living tales of glorious and opulent ages of the past.
You admire tradition, art and architecture, you stroll on streets that are the
testament of how the tides of time turn. How fickle our heart, to give such
glamour to the past, to choose to see the shining lights and the wonderful
colours, yet disregard everything else, sitting in the corner of our eyes. We yearn
for La Belle poque, thinking it will be just us the ones to sit in the outstanding
palaces and attend the famous and infamous balls. We see ourselves friends with
all the right people, the ones time has bestowed greatness upon. It is easy to
dream of time turning back and leaving you a victor.

Look out! Time might not be what you make of it.

Simona Mihalca