In the second complete paragraph on Page 80, in the new chapter for this week, there is a sentence:
    “We could say that there are different ‘lineages’ of time, each recorded in accord with its specific nature and qualities, each tranmitting forward; each actively feeding into the present to give the present its specific form.”
I don’t think that I have previously noticed that “record” means “restring” and “in accord” means “in a string”. This page makes other uses of this interesting root word, as in “accordingly”. “Accordingly”, I wish to make the argument that the presents connection with the past is being compared to the stringing of a necklace in which the concerns of the present and the selection of what is considered noteworthy about the past form a mutually defining necklace of moments. In this necklace both the individual beads (moments) and their concatenation in a presumed sequence of cause and affect appear to be the choice of the artist (time at the service of an interested party?). This morning, while I was reading this chapter, my dog who has terrible allergies, was rolling around the floor on his back trying to scratch his belly with his rather arthritic back legs. Ah, I said, it’s the salmon skin I gave him last night, and went and got some benedryl tablets. Did I intreprete his rolling on his back as a “present” allergic response because he has had allergies for years in the “past”? Did I remember the salmon skin in the “past” because he was franticallyscratching in the “present”? Both; if we intreprete the connection our mind makes between past and present as a lineage in which the past conditions our present and our present reinterpretes/selects/provides-a-context-for moments-of-interest that are thereby sculpted out of the raw material of memory. Accordingly, recorded memory is not remembered until it has a place to land in the present. And the present moment is drawn using the crayons of childhood. –Michael
