(no subject)
A while back I decided not to dawdle on the nostalgaic, and I don't anymore. But sometimes when I am idle, I reflect upon it and the nature of time and human experience in time's progression. I think about my own duration that I can recall. The 70's. The 80's. The 90's. So much time, but still so little. The past seems separate from me anymore, an alternate world, a unique, whole dimension apart from Now. I keep imagining it as an afterimage of reality as we experience it. Each thought I give to the past is a flash in the darkness, illuminating the quiet, dead, paralyzed moment that is all-encompassing. One moment in the past to me is the same as that moment to someone else, somewhere else.
To say "seven o'clock in the evening, Tuesday the 3rd of June, 1978" means a moment, a minute where I lived, where, for 60 seconds, everyone else also lived. I was probably at home, in the den of the House on Sunnybrook Road, likely either playing with Legos or with the fledgling video games of the era. Mom and dad lived together and talked to each other. My brother did his homework or wrote down stuff about his next D&D game. The dogs wandered in the back yard. The television was on, likely some random movie on this new Home Box Office thing we'd just had hooked up.
At that time, everyone else did their thing, lived their lives or died their deaths. Lots of people thought about the future and what it would bring. I remember some of the tv shows and movies and books that I looked at about what was to come in the next twenty years. I did that a lot. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by plastic bricks, building cars and cranes and battlefields for my little Lego soldiers, watching a movie, probably about Outer Space, I worried about nuclear war that a tv show had said was coming in 1999, and I dreampt of flying starships and living with robots and houses that did everything for me so I could do more magical things that science would bring. In the past, I always looked to the future, with fear and with wonder, as cliche as that comes out. But I was always desparate to see what was coming next.
And that moment, that minute... it ended. We moved on. We took that minute step into the next minute. As likely as not, we continued to do the same thing we did in the previous minute. But that minute was lost, shut down, over. Its utility in the progression of natural things had expired.
We left behind a world in that minute, as we do every day now, as we do this minute. A copy of everything, made and stored in ourselves as memory. Were we to time travel, as impossible as that is, we might go back to a previous minute in our lives. One from an hour ago, one from 20 years past. I imagine that whenever we reverse to, it would be a dark-lit world, full of tired light no longer willing to shine. People, the shells of experience they created by existing, would be everywhere, rigid in that last second as the force of time gave out. The world, the universe, would be silent, sound having long since ceased. Air would be reluctant to move out of your way as you passed by. Every molecule would be part of a cadaver of the minute of the universe, requiring outside energy to stir again. You could imagine the entire world, stopped as it was discarded by time, powdered with the residue of the friction of passing moment.
Everything would be still, and you would know that this minute you've returned to, it's done and down, from one end of the globe to the other. All that which happened in this minute had been done and passed by. It's old news. However badly it wanted to continue, the minute is gone, and there would be that chill that doesn't come from lower temperatures. It would be the understanding that there is a distance between the gone minute and the end of time. You would be alone, time traveller. Time would not restart where you go to. There is nothing left in the past for existence to return to and rework for your presence and pleasure. Look through time, from the moment of whatever memory you now dwell on. Look forward from that perspective, from that vantage point and collection of experience you had gathered up until that minute, and see Now, and look at it with eyes shaded by the enervated but frozen wonder of Then. See the moment where time still moves, people still create and destroy. The end of time, where it burns brightest. NOW.
Now is the End of Time, not some point in the future where time stops. Now is the end, because now is where time is constantly building reality, through nature, through physics, through us. There is no time travel to the future, because it has not been built yet. Every second ahead of you is the end of time. We are breaking the ice of nothing and nonexistance by progressing. We make time by continuing.
This is why I have to discard my nostalgia, I now understand. The past is empty, however detailed it might be, however beautiful or poigniant or painful. To go there is to dwell amongst the dead parts of existance and to stare endlessly at the static tapestry of that which is done and cannot be undone. And each moment spent in the past is one forcibly stolen from the future, from the time-forging motion of existing.
Know the past for what it is; the trail you have broken through the void by being. It can help you get your bearings, show you where to go in relation to where you've been. But the treasure, the troubles, and the truth, they only lie ahead of you. Don't spend too many moments in the past, for you will lose the chance to use them to forge more of your future. Use your new time, your every second if you wish, to appreciate and understand and love the beauty of creation, the genesis of every moment that you are. See others around you as they push away the folds of nonbeing next to you, around you. Love them, too, for they are artists, each and every one of them. They all create a part of the world in this moment, whether they know it or not. Some make harsh moments, others peaceful, others productive or useless moments, but they all create their own artful piece of time out of nothingness.
Give a small amount of time to the past, though. Use it to step out of the forge and watch time progress from the minute you've stepped back into, and not to simply stare at the used minute around the old you that you have left behind. The peacefulness of dead time locked in memory will grant you focus as you see the now moving on from then through the eyes of that discarded, past you. And always, always love the dilligent, gifted artists around you who chip away to carve out the beauty of existance. Love them, and love yourself, for all the work we do to chisel our time and being out of nothingness.
To say "seven o'clock in the evening, Tuesday the 3rd of June, 1978" means a moment, a minute where I lived, where, for 60 seconds, everyone else also lived. I was probably at home, in the den of the House on Sunnybrook Road, likely either playing with Legos or with the fledgling video games of the era. Mom and dad lived together and talked to each other. My brother did his homework or wrote down stuff about his next D&D game. The dogs wandered in the back yard. The television was on, likely some random movie on this new Home Box Office thing we'd just had hooked up.
At that time, everyone else did their thing, lived their lives or died their deaths. Lots of people thought about the future and what it would bring. I remember some of the tv shows and movies and books that I looked at about what was to come in the next twenty years. I did that a lot. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by plastic bricks, building cars and cranes and battlefields for my little Lego soldiers, watching a movie, probably about Outer Space, I worried about nuclear war that a tv show had said was coming in 1999, and I dreampt of flying starships and living with robots and houses that did everything for me so I could do more magical things that science would bring. In the past, I always looked to the future, with fear and with wonder, as cliche as that comes out. But I was always desparate to see what was coming next.
And that moment, that minute... it ended. We moved on. We took that minute step into the next minute. As likely as not, we continued to do the same thing we did in the previous minute. But that minute was lost, shut down, over. Its utility in the progression of natural things had expired.
We left behind a world in that minute, as we do every day now, as we do this minute. A copy of everything, made and stored in ourselves as memory. Were we to time travel, as impossible as that is, we might go back to a previous minute in our lives. One from an hour ago, one from 20 years past. I imagine that whenever we reverse to, it would be a dark-lit world, full of tired light no longer willing to shine. People, the shells of experience they created by existing, would be everywhere, rigid in that last second as the force of time gave out. The world, the universe, would be silent, sound having long since ceased. Air would be reluctant to move out of your way as you passed by. Every molecule would be part of a cadaver of the minute of the universe, requiring outside energy to stir again. You could imagine the entire world, stopped as it was discarded by time, powdered with the residue of the friction of passing moment.
Everything would be still, and you would know that this minute you've returned to, it's done and down, from one end of the globe to the other. All that which happened in this minute had been done and passed by. It's old news. However badly it wanted to continue, the minute is gone, and there would be that chill that doesn't come from lower temperatures. It would be the understanding that there is a distance between the gone minute and the end of time. You would be alone, time traveller. Time would not restart where you go to. There is nothing left in the past for existence to return to and rework for your presence and pleasure. Look through time, from the moment of whatever memory you now dwell on. Look forward from that perspective, from that vantage point and collection of experience you had gathered up until that minute, and see Now, and look at it with eyes shaded by the enervated but frozen wonder of Then. See the moment where time still moves, people still create and destroy. The end of time, where it burns brightest. NOW.
Now is the End of Time, not some point in the future where time stops. Now is the end, because now is where time is constantly building reality, through nature, through physics, through us. There is no time travel to the future, because it has not been built yet. Every second ahead of you is the end of time. We are breaking the ice of nothing and nonexistance by progressing. We make time by continuing.
This is why I have to discard my nostalgia, I now understand. The past is empty, however detailed it might be, however beautiful or poigniant or painful. To go there is to dwell amongst the dead parts of existance and to stare endlessly at the static tapestry of that which is done and cannot be undone. And each moment spent in the past is one forcibly stolen from the future, from the time-forging motion of existing.
Know the past for what it is; the trail you have broken through the void by being. It can help you get your bearings, show you where to go in relation to where you've been. But the treasure, the troubles, and the truth, they only lie ahead of you. Don't spend too many moments in the past, for you will lose the chance to use them to forge more of your future. Use your new time, your every second if you wish, to appreciate and understand and love the beauty of creation, the genesis of every moment that you are. See others around you as they push away the folds of nonbeing next to you, around you. Love them, too, for they are artists, each and every one of them. They all create a part of the world in this moment, whether they know it or not. Some make harsh moments, others peaceful, others productive or useless moments, but they all create their own artful piece of time out of nothingness.
Give a small amount of time to the past, though. Use it to step out of the forge and watch time progress from the minute you've stepped back into, and not to simply stare at the used minute around the old you that you have left behind. The peacefulness of dead time locked in memory will grant you focus as you see the now moving on from then through the eyes of that discarded, past you. And always, always love the dilligent, gifted artists around you who chip away to carve out the beauty of existance. Love them, and love yourself, for all the work we do to chisel our time and being out of nothingness.