"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird
got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."
I’m learning more and more that
the flow of time is completely relative. There is no predictability
here. On a clear night, I can see 2.5 million years into the past,
just by looking up to the stars, my ancient ancestors. Time is not a
constant.
“At this latitude I’m spinning
836 miles an hour around the earth’s axis; I often fancy I feel my
sweeping fall as a breakneck arc like the dive of dolphins.”
In a single square foot
of earth, or a gallon of ocean water, a million interesting things
could be happening at any moment. And in the same moment, the 100
billion neurons in my brain are mysteriously bleeping information
back and forth to one another. Each one of them is capable of
transmitting an electrochemical signal to incredible distances. In
the time it takes me to sigh, or uncross my legs, or brush the hair
away from my eyes, 10 million other things may have happened within
my own body. How many ways can a moment be measured?
Summer is already flirting with Fall, but in
San Francisco
the fog has only just put in for its annual leave of absence. We
expect the hazy days again in November, but by then I might already
be somewhere else, and I don’t know what season to expect. Last
October was just last week sometimes, and sometimes last October
happened all year long.
You say you mark the time by
what car you were driving, what music filled your ears. I tend to
mark the passage of time by who has come, who has gone, and what we
shared with each other while we could. Sometimes I feel that every
moment grows heavier than the one before it with history, like snow
piling higher and higher in a storm. Sometimes it seems that this
moment would just melt away without the cold foundation of the past.
But I’m often happier when I imagine that this moment is the only
one that exists, has ever existed, and will ever exist.
The past sometimes comes back
to me in a series of isolated sensations and images: a surge of
warmth, a sweet kiss, a heart-sink, a flower ring on my finger and a
swirl of static and color. And then, I don’t want to forget. I used
to think I could preserve the past in shoeboxes of mementos. But
ticket-stubs and kids-meal toys don’t mean much anymore, and I find
that it’s okay to let these little memories weave together into a
happy glow, like the sun on my back. And face forward.
And now, whatever “now” may
mean, and however it is divided or displayed, whether it is a panel
in a storyboard or a tic mark or an isolated entity with no past or
future, NOW, I am happy.
