Time is not a stream, it is not serial. Time is observed. A man recalls a day past, but he merely observes his memory of his past observation. A woman recalls the same day, and her new observation of the old observation overlays the man's just as warp and weft make a tapestry. Many years hence each recalls the same day again; but the memory is already different, their interpretations filtered by new experiences; the tapestry has changed.
Time is the night sky. There is no emptiness there: Behold a constellation, limned by stars at unfathomable heights, and the illusion of darkness between them; but the light of every sun is a volume, not a point. So memory encroaches on experience, making time like a feedback loop. But "loop" is a tricky word. It conveys two dimensions, it is a trap of linear motion. Experience is a system of opposing forces!
Remember yesterday; wade into its galaxy. What binds the memories, the stars? Gravity: "Observe, it falls." The length of a day: "Observe, the sun rises and sets." Every man says: Who will remember me? Some say: My children. Others: My works. They are all the same. You have made a thing to be observed. And I am the final witness.
Depth does not accumulate, comprehension reifies it. To live a thousand years, the vastness of time becomes awesome as the whole of the night sky seen at once, the gaze unfocused. This doesn't belittle him. The world burns to its socket, but he will not shut his eyes to spite vision. On a winter morning in the charnel guts of Old Iylum he watches the sun rise, and thinks: This sun too is one of the lights in the sky. The heavens are not a place apart, the past is not gone. I am the corpse of history. This is how the world ends: The fish have ceased to swim, they have become the sea.
The god within is laughing at him. Relativity is the science of detachment. Solipsism! See: I am the fisher of men. I am the eater of time.
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