The Persistence of Time, Memory, and the Impermanence of the Present Moment (245 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.9 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by swine_powered_sock_monkey (View user info) at 2006-10-24 16:08:09 EDT
Time is a funny thing. It has the tendancy to keep ticking on even when you're not paying attention. Days turn into weeks that become months and then it's already Christmas again. Another year older, another year ripped from our clutches just as we were getting comfortable. Time is also relative. Why do the 9 hours I spend working seem longer than the 15 hours I get all to myself? Why does a weekend with the relatives take more time than a week of vacation in the tropics?
Tricky thing, that old clock.
I'm sitting quietly in my living room sorting photographs. As I look at each one I'm taken back to the place and time that I took the picture. The memory washes over me and suddenly I have a keen awareness of exactly how many years have passed in the meantime. It is a phantom pain, a distant, detached aching of some long lost part of myself, calling out to me from oblivion. A sunrise over the flat Texas desert. A bright October day in the Bahamas. A snowy February morning in Germany. A cold, crisp December night looking out over San Fransisco Bay. The majesty of darkness over downtown Savannah. These photos, nothing more than colorful bits of paper, hold captive a part of the past, a small fragment of a second captured and displayed. That fragment represents a present time come to pass. A short instant that can never be recovered. Only by the grace of the photographer does this moment survive beyond its very own present.
The present is hard to describe. At best I can say it is the ever changing state of being. A single frame of film, existing only for the brief moment that it passes before the projector's bulb, then fading into the past as another frame takes it's place, so on and so forth. Impermanent as it may be, our perception of the present time is the only contact we have with our lives, everything else being but a distant memory or a hope for the future. This is why we must strive to make the best of that present moment, as how we felt then and how we'll feel later matter little when all we actually experience is *now*.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
- Ford Prefect
User Reviews
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2006-10-24 22:11:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Mindless +2 onaccounta I closed on ma house today.
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2006-10-24 20:50:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
No Comment
Submitted by UnderOathMeal (user info) at 2006-10-24 20:18:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-10-24 17:59:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
I don't think you packed these couple of paragraphs with enough cliches.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-10-24 16:54:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Didn't read it, but +2 for your user name!
Submitted by Danger_Ranger (user info) at 2006-10-24 16:26:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
word.
Submitted by SPECIALk (user info) at 2006-10-24 16:21:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Time is a thief...stupid time
Submitted by swine_powered_hate_machine (user info) at 2006-10-24 16:20:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm not sure if there were drugs involved with this one... been six months or more since I wrote it. But knowing me, yeah, I was lit when I layed it out.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-10-24 16:18:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
I'm pissed because those mutherfuckers at Target are ALREADY putting up Xmad decorations.
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-10-24 16:18:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No comment.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-10-24 16:16:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
just smoked your first joint or something?