Tonight I watched a ‘timely’ show (ha!) — a P.O.V. documentary on PBS called “Nostalgia for the Light.” Â Described as “a remarkable meditation on memory, history and eternity” the movie focuses on three groups of people who search for and study the past in the Atacama Desert of Chile — archaeologists, astronomers and old women who sift through the desert sands in search of loved ones lost to the massacres of the Pinochet regime. Â Members of each group were interviewed, reflecting on the matter of time, of what it means in the present to study and search for the past, and what “past” and “present” mean, at all. Â There was much that struck me in relation to our topic here.
One astronomer’s words were quite insightful — “All of our life experiences, including this conversation, happened in the past. Even if it is a matter of millionths of a second. The camera I am looking at now is a few meters away and is therefore already several millionths of a second in the past in relation to the time on my watch. ”
He continues, in conversation with the interviewer:
Interviewer: “How long does it take for moonlight to reach us?”
Astronomer: “Just over a second.”
Interviewer: “And sunlight?”
Astronomer: “Eight minutes.”
Interviewer: “So we don’t see things at the very instant we look at them?”
Astronomer: “No, that’s the trap. The present doesn’t exist. It’s true. The only present that might exist is the one in my mind. It’s the closest we come to the absolute present. And not even then! When I think, it takes a moment for the signal to travel between my senses… there is a lapse in time.â€
I’ve long known about the lapse of time for light from stars and such to reach us, but had never considered a similar lapse when visually taking in things that are quite close (like this laptop screen), or even the miniscule lapse of time it takes for thoughts in my head to reach my fingers typing here. Â It’s as though my hands themselves operate on past information. Â What is truly “present?”
Good morning, Bev,
I agree with David that your post wonderfully captures the limited approximations that arise whenever we attempt to get closer to experience. A thought arose while I was driving a few minutes ago (I won’t attempt to claim that I was paying attention to the flying moment, nor the adjacent flying vehicles at the time). It was the following: the fact that experience and it’s alleged referrent (event and our awareness of it) can never be brought together in the same exact timeframe is itself powerful evidence that a broader body of time exists that leaves room for both. When we see a supernova millions of light years away and think, this drawing in the sky occurred millions of years ago and may not even exist now, what are we saying? When we say that a tree falling in the forest with no witness may or may not have fallen, what are we saying? Perhaps the unwitnessed treefall and the supernova are evidence that time is a vast meadow in which events are their own witnesses. The supernova probably had a few intense moments, the tree collapsing into the underbrush probably “knows” that an important time has arisen in its life, not to mention the suprised raven squacking to his mates, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling.” Perhaps seeking to get close to a moment in time, is just our individual dance step on the dance floor of a time that has no borders. –Michael
Hi!
This is great! Thanks for posting it. It pulls attention as close as we can to ‘now’, how close can we come to it? One thing seems obvious to inquiry, that it is possible for us to come closer than we normally do, and opens the inquiry to how, what do we fill the fleeting instant with, if we didn’t fill it with discursive thought, what would be revealed?
I seem to be forever peering into this. Fascinating exploration, me thinks. :-)
Best wishes,
David