Time – “move on, nothing to see here!”

Like a mirror, the ruins reflect the image of those who look at them: between the memory of what has been and the hope of what will be, man contemplates the familiar image of time, his double.

(Michel Makarius, Senior Lecturer, University of Paris)

Time is unlike the spatial dimensions in that we have no control over where we stand within it. We can choose to stand in particular space. We can move to another place, and move back and then we can choose to move somewhere else. If we decide to live by the river and then the river floods we can move up the valley or stay where we are. Within limits we are quite happy with the dimensions of space. Not so with time. We have no choice where we stand. We are at point x, and then in the next moment we are at x+1 and then x+2 and “hey stop for a moment, I want to enjoy the view”! But time keeps pushing us on in one direction only. We can never go back to where we were before. Time is the riot police inching us down the street step by step. And then we suddenly realise that there is no crossroad at the end. Just a drop into an abyss. “Who are these police?” “Do they not have any humanity?”

 

Time makes for men what space makes for monuments; we only judge each other well at a  distance and at the point of perspective; too close we do not see them, too far we do not see them anymore.

(Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, French Poet)