Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and ... Time?

There is something incalculably strange about the passing of time. It forces us to confront our almost absolute impotence. I remember breaking bad news to a loved one. It was long, long after the fact. Her reaction was mostly rage born of frustration. Rage because she couldn't change anything. Rage that was all the more strange because her knowing the bad news altered nothing apart from her awareness. The resulting circumstances had been lived with for years. Knowing the happening did not mean that the sad event had happened more forcefully or solidly. The event itself was not changed one whit.

The future is obscured by a veil, only becoming clear in the razor-wide incision we call now, which calcifies in the instant it is upon us, and becomes past. Yet, what we do with that razor's edge. Any action longer than a breath, a blink, an electric impulse shot down a nerve, the jostling of an atom, is built somehow on an untouchable sediment of past decision. By aiming a stream of constant change at the almost non-existent present we can sculpt what becomes the past. However, what good is that? Is the past of any value beyond it's faint reflection shining back onto our razor's edge? That reflection is all we may leave. It is all we will ourselves become.

3 comments:

The Olsen's said...

Ummm...yeah! That's what she said! How are you feeling Nick...I will probably call you later today or tomorrow.

Ashlie said...

Interesting... Aimee, I'm scandalized!

apb said...

A very interesting juggling of words and introspection, Sir Nicholas. You know it's good when no one understands it the first three times through.

Next I think you ought to address the following quandary: Is God all-powerful enough to create something so heavy he cannot lift it? And then so as to appease the easily distraught, devise a solution that solves the dilemma, sans blasphemy of course.