There’s nothing weirder than leaping forward and back in time on long-haul flights, gaining and losing the handfuls of hours otherwise taken for granted. If it were possible always to travel from east to west I think I’d be even happier than I am staying put. But the dread of a red eye home to London, however, begins to weigh on me even before I leave on the first leg. So when it comes to the time loss type of jet lag, I’ve found there to be two possible antidotes to related suffering...

Noon. It is the quiet part of the day, the time before they’ve woken up. With some exceptions: a few, now, have babies, and occasionally record signs of their early mornings on the internet. But for the most part, they are in their beds, still, arms flung over heads, covers bunched around feet, dreaming their third set of the night’s dreams.

Photo: Megan Adie

Brainstorming recipes that might belong in our TIME ZONES ISSUE this month was no easy task. Sure, we thought of offering ideas for chic little lunches you can bring on international flights, or the best road trip offerings across bandwidths of the U.S., but nothing truly grabbed our imagination or quickened our heartbeats.

So in true Olympia Monthly form, after spending ages thinking of all the obvious things, we came up with something not quite on-topic, but not exactly off it, either. And so we present you here with a handful of recipes that require little more than assembly plus a quotient of time - be it minutes, hours, or days. No, we're not suggesting you use a crock pot! (We are anti-crock pot). Rather: we present you with our choice of homemade infusions for all the very best things we could think of: vanilla, lavender, herbes de Provence, and cardamom.

A a cache of clocks, a bevy of bezels, a trove of tickers, a storm of sundials (?)...whatever you'd like to call it, we've rounded up our favorite and absolutely most useful time pieces for you here, for adorning your wrists, towers, ring fingers, and lipstick cases (!).

Pictured: an Art Deco pendant watch of gold, platinum, emeralds, onyx and enamel, by Cartier. Via Beauty Bling Jewelry.

Many a sweet couple in a long distance relationship has of course spent an evening at home together side-by-screen. Asleep. But sometimes more action is required, and usually so is dinner. So when you're looking for more, here are some ideas for feeling closer.

Olympia Monthly is proud to present you with the first edition of our advice + etiquette column, DEAR DIANA. This month’s question is apt indeed for our resident goddess of childbirth, the moon, and the hunt. Also, knowing how babies appear to bend time while you’re looking at them, we also think it’s an appropriate Q for our Time Zones Issue. We hope you enjoy...

W.G. Sebald, one of our favourite writers EVER, wrote in Austerlitz, “It was only by following the course time prescribed that we could hasten through the gigantic spaces separating us from each other.”

Thus for your Monday we've compiled meditations on time (in the form of a quote, a set of historical maps, and a recommended reading list). 

We have emerged from under our cloud of GREY.  And now we're ready to bathe ourselves under a cloudless sun as we contemplate TIME ZONES, and particularly the ever-lengthening days and the warm promises of an impending summer.

Maybe it's because we both hail from warmer, drier climes, only to find ourselves living on a soggy island (Barbara) or in a cloudy, landlocked corner of Northern Europe (Lydia), but here at Olympia Monthly we believe ourselves to be both connoisseurs and fans of sun and warmth.

So as semi-professionals in the business of sun worshipping - and to kick off our issue on Time Zones - we present you with a list of our favorite sunshine(s), ranging from the strong and animal, to the charmingly weak and vegetal.  In no particular order, each with a personal photo album.

A new poem from Poet, Friend, and Fellow Traveler Samuel Solomon. Published for the first time here...

For May and our TIME ZONES  issue, we bring you a playlist of pop from the recent past: songs mostly about love, which are really all about time...

Image, from left to right: Salvador Dalí "Metronome," 1944; Man Ray "Indestructible Object," 1923 (1965) and Claes Oldenburg – Coosje van Bruggen "Silent Metronome," 16 inch, Version Three, 2005 (Photography: Attilio Maranzano)

We can hardly believe it, but the cruelest month has come to the end, and along with it, we’ve put a wrap on our inaugural issue at Olympia Monthly.

As our name indicates (and because we celebrate the tides and moons, whether we like it or not), we’re on a monthly schedule around here. So, at the close of April, we’re excited to be switching gears. And as we speed joyfully into May, we are happy to present our second issue, a month-long exploration of literally all things related to TIME ZONES!