We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
– Anais Nin
You might ask what a French born female writer of erotica, a Canadian hockey star named the greatest hockey player ever, and the literary creation of an American self-made man who reinvents himself for love, have in common.
As we spring forward into the season of renewal and rebirth, I wander the recesses of my mind in search of signs of future visions. Instead, moments from the past emerge from craggy corners, floating up to the surface. I try to grab and hold these lingering images as they replay again and again – wispy illusions that reconfigure and reinvent.
I find the official versions of the past, present, and future don’t come well sealed. They actually delight in switching places, disappearing, reappearing and overlaying. I can dwell on past events in a reverie, wallow in nostalgia, or take it to the level of obsession. I can also extract joy, savor, and live in the moment. The future may be full of possibility, but just try to project it and the past will likely seep in the unsealed cracks. And as quickly as you have read this sentence, the present becomes the past. Perhaps there are really only 2 states of being – the present past and the present future because you are at present either reconstructing or constructing in the service of living in the present moment.
When Nick tells Fitzgerald’s literary creation Gatsby “you can’t live in the past” he replies incredulously, “Why of course you can.” Gatsby goes so far as to reinvent himself to recreate a past in the future that will satisfy at present what he can only dream of again and again.
As artists we draw on the past, whether as photographers, painters, writers of memoir, makers of documentaries, or as creators of fiction who ask “what if?” We can also choose to project visions of the future as a utopian existence or a dystopian world to hold a mirror up to our culture. We (or the futurists) can take the lessons of the past, predict, and craft cautionary tales. Perhaps we should add hockey player Wayne Gretsky, the Great One, to the list of visionaries and “Skate where the puck is going, not where it’s been.”
Most of us have our very own relationship with the slippery states of past, present, and future. Some would argue, “well that’s the way it really happened” and they’d be right. Ask 3 more people and you will have 3 or 4 versions of the story. And not one is more correct – they are perceptions of the truth. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.”
So, you could live with regret, resign, or seek redemption. You could rescind, relocate, revise and reclaim. Or you could relay, resign, reinstate and take a recess. Or if like Gretzky you believed that “you miss 100% of the shots you never take” you could revitalize, reinvigorate, recreate or reincarnate.
As testimony to man’s resilience in the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald writes ”we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” I too am often seduced by the past, but also love the prospect of the future. Like Einstein though, I believe that time is an illusion. And it occurs to me that I have included 35 words with the prefix “re” meaning again and again…
Aha we are into philosophy, time is an illusion.
Considerare sub specie aeternitatus, Spinoza said.
Which means consider all things in the light of eternity.
Logic is timeless, reason is timeless.
The past is nothing more than memory now, the eternal now, must be timeless.
The future is an idea now of what might happen later, yet also later will always be now, the eternal now.
Experience is only now.
Both past and future are pictures, imaginations, in the now, the eternal now , that knows no time.
No nostalgia, craving for the past , nor hope for the future can have a fundament, just imaginations, illusions.
Relaxing in the now is all there is, it will all evolve by itself, all that happens happens necessarily, could not have been differently.
Time is the fear of death of the I. When time is gone, I am gone, dissolved in Onenness.
And true happiness, whatever the circumstances, peeps around the corner
The concept of time has been a mind trip since I read "Sidhartha" by Herman Hesse as a teenager. There was a conversation between Sidhartha and the boatkeeper where the boatkeeper explained there was no such thing as time. It is all one. The concept as I recall (and my recollection these 40 years later could be entirely false) was to see time as a tapestry. You can move your eyes from one image to the next, or one color or one thread to the next, or you can look at the tapestry as a whole. It's all the same. I think Martha is right, we are in a constant state of present past and present future. Now let's all go drop some acid and discuss.
I say live life to the fullest every moment, for each moment is but a memory as soon as it takes place. Memories are really all we have.