Time

Now is Then is Now

If then is now Then now is then World without end — Amen

Time, that elusive concept that does not exist. I think the clearest notion of its non-existence lies in trying to ascertain the precise length of the current moment. It doesn’t seem to have any edges. In other words, there does not appear to be a clearly defined past or an obvious future. Just this edgeless present that travels with past- and future-less me wherever or whenever I go or remain.

Still, into this past-less moment rises images that seem to belong to me. There is the one of me lying on my back by the little cottage our dad bought for us to live in. It came with seven acres of farmland which he rents to the local farmer plus a quarter acre of lawn and such which I (not voluntarily) have to mow now and then, though not in the winter (the lawn then under feet of snow, one acceptable winter-silver lining).

On my back in the grass gazing up into the cloudy sky noticing for the first time (I’m eleven I believe) what I later came to know as a floater, that little hair-like speck in your eye that moves when the eye moves. Odd, I thought and tried to catch it, but it’s uncatchable it darts away at the very same pace as you dart for it. How odd.

“Have you noticed?” I asked my mom a little later, “that there’s a small piece of hair in your eye?”

She looks up from her cooking task. Says nothing.

“In your eye,” I repeat for emphasis. “Inside.”

“No,” she says.

“I seem to have such a hair in my left eye,” I inform her.

“Okay,” she says, obviously not concerned.

“Yes, I guess it is,” I say.

All this in one small image which arose and then softly exploded into all this when I put my attention on it and added some interest, stirred well, and drank deeply.

That was a then that rose and grew into a now. It was a now then, and now it hijacked the now of the present. Then it dropped away, waving goodbye, and trailing the sweet notion of only having one small, thin floater in the left eye. These days my floaters are the size of driftwood, in both eyes. I have to lean over and peek around them to see anything.

And then there’s future. Sometimes future and apprehension is one and the same, especially those little things I have to do that I don’t like doing since I tire more easily these days and moving things around — like moving my reading chair into my carpeted bedroom so I can sweep my uncarpeted front room — seems to take small bits out of me. I’m not really worried about this, it is the growing feebleness of age I gather, I suspect, I know. And when I decide of a morning that today, yes, I’ll sweep again (not that things ever get very dirty or dusty around here) and then later remember my promise to myself, there’s the twinge of apprehension, of having to face, confront, exert, lift, sweep, lift again, and so on.

Another future is not so much apprehension as anticipation: dying.

Almost excitement.

Curiosity.

A little concerned about pain involved, but mostly kinda looking forward to such things and doing my best meditation-wise to prepare myself as best I can, perhaps even to the point of sitting myself away, just leaving one day butt still on the cushion, legs still crossed, nose still calibrated and tuned for air, but no more air. Just like that. Here one moment and gone the next.

Curiosity.

This anticipation has no real edges either, grows part of the edge-less now that I cart around my cabin and carry on my walk and let melt into nothing as sweet Samadhi rises to embrace.

There is a door that closes and seals hermetically at the end of a life: No Memories Beyond This Point! says the sign, and you have to let them all go (or they’ll squeeze them out of you) and leave them behind that door that now sucks itself into a memory-tight seal and going forward you remember nothing of what you just left. Who you were/are and such.

If you’ve been good (Karmically speaking) you will find a gestating baby to occupy; yes, let’s hope you’ve been good. And then it’s down the chute and out into the hands of a bottom-slapping nurse that yodels “It’s a boy. It’s a boy.”

Nary a memory, only future, apprehension-less as yet.

The Pali Canon is quite emphatic on this point: Gotama Buddha could remember prior lives, who and where he was, his parents and siblings then, biographical details spanning eons they say. He was a rare creature. Though not alone, they say. Sail deeply enough into Samadhi and the hermetically sealed doors will unseal and let memories leak.

Into the un-edged present. Then is now. Now is then. The then is then’ing it now, and the now is now’ing it then, not an edge in sight.

Though there are moments, pieces of then, that do not spring to life as themselves but send indifferently made copies of themselves up into the present to masquerade as then. And as I notice this duplicity, I peel away the outer skin but there’s another just beneath and beneath it another for I don’t know how many and I never seem to arrive at the actual moment, the real then — as if the moment itself keeps a secret it does not want to reveal, a secret I very much want it to share.

The copies don’t know this secret, they only know how to appear like a true then, the true then hiding. Elusive things, such moments. Precious, too, I suspect; that’s why I keep in trying, trying to catch it unawares, ready to share its secret — but no such luck, it is very much on its toes this moment, sees or hears or smells me coming from miles away and sprays me with copies again.

Or with other thens, recruited to stand in for it. Me in a rowboat upon the small lake by my Grandma Irene’s house. “Be careful,” admonishes both Mom and Grandma and I promise I will be. Of course, I will be. I don’t want me to drown as much as you don’t want me to drown, although I don’t say that.

I bring some earthworms I’ve dug up earlier and put in an old, partly rusty canned food tin (along with moist dirt to keep them fresh for the fish) along with my fishing rod and line and hook and floater and sinker and I place them in the boat and push the boat out onto the reedy water and jump on just before it slips out of reach and now I’m on the water and place the oars in the locks that bear the oars’ name and quietly slip into deeper water where I let the boat glide while I fish out a worm and thread it onto the hook. As I push him onto the sharp point the little creature shits all of his insides out onto my fingers. I’m used to that for I have learned to feel no compassion for earthworms because they can’t feel a thing, is what my dad says.

Once on the hook the little guy wriggles and squirms the last of his life juices away — wriggling and squirming is good for it lures the hungry fish, is what my dad says. So I hurry to get the worm and hook and sinker over the side of the boat and into the water. I’ve adjusted the line to sink about six feet before the surface (length of line from floater to hopefully still squirming worm).

And damn if I don’t get a bite right away. A good one too. The floater sinks all the way below the slippery surface, and I yank the well-sized though by now utterly confused perch out of the water and into the boat. A good foot long this one. Oh, my.

You have to watch it when you pick one up, the top fins are spiked and sharp and can draw revenge blood if you’re not careful. I am careful. Seize the perch guy and work the hook out of its mouth and then bend its head all the way back, far, far further back than perch heads are supposed to bend to the tune of cracking and crackling neck bones as they break and kill the perch stone dead. No compassion there either. It’s only a fish, is what my dad says. Even dead it shivers a little. Then it’s shiver-less and I dip into the earthworm can and fish out another sacrifice to perch hunting.

And now, up here in the present, I realize I’ve been had again, by the elusive then sending up different (though quite interesting) thens in its place.

Oh, well.

I could not kill an earthworm today, much less break a perch neck.

What gave me the right?

They’re all gone now: Dad, Mom, Grandmas (both of them). Irene lived to nearly a hundred. The last time I visited Grandma Irene’s house Dad was still alive, and with me as it happened. No sign of the rowboat, but an old Volvo 444 in the barn, strangely. Worth quite a bit these days, I’d venture.

Both Mom and Dad went like (snap) this. Here one moment, gone the next. I can only hope that’s in my genes, too. I’d hate to linger.

But if then has no edges and now has no edges and future has no edges, who’s to tell what from what?

I sit in this edge-less moment, watching yesterday’s fingers type tomorrow’s musing, that’s what I do.

Quite content.

© Wolfstuff

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