tenseless time

tenseless time

fiction
edward w pritchard

see also the computer who couldn't accept the here and now-Feb 04, 2010

Most people attach a monumental significant to now. Now is when they are in their primacy and all events and times previous, according to the standard belief, unfolded to bring about now as unique and extraordinary. This view of time makes it common sense and logical to see time flowing past to present to future. The present is specious, to be sure, but there is a reality to it and even past and future seem to really exist.

An observer in the past of course had a now and probably had the same opinion of his own primacy and the uniqueness of his now.

Think of a Greek in 500 BC sitting down to breakfast of olives, dates and a sort of tea drink or wine. He knows nothing of us in the future. He knows little of the past before him, of two thousands years before his now; certainly not like we know his times.

He has a bowl with two handles in front of him. It is black and orange/red, and the black shines remarkably. Somber figures are painted on the bowl. There is a pathos to the figures and the Greek notes it to himself as he eats breakfast.

Twenty-five hundred years from then you look at the same bowl in a case at the Youngstown museum of art. You are startled by the colors and there is an element of timelessness in the figures and presentation that intrigues you and gets you to thinking about time.

Which was now for the two handled bowl.