Magdalene

Time Interpreted 

When I was approached with the role to interpret time, I immediately began to think of the one tangible representation created centuries ago.  It did not preface the original version of our present clock, but a clock seemed too obvious.  I began to think of the hourglass.  That alone left me with little, but a visual reference, and an obvious divide:  the past, present and future.  I then asked myself; what is my own conception of time.  It is a rather abstract notion, indeed.  Definitions vary from philosopher to theologian to physicist.  Einstein applied the laws of relativity to this very obscure notion.  To him, time depended on the spatial context.  Human perception of time was only relative.  Newton believed time to be a “container” of events.  He therefore objectified time.  The idea of container brought me back to my original thought, the hourglass, as containing the grains which represent moments to me, events to Newton.  In fact, one of the older analogies describes time of life as sand in the hourglass.  Each present moment is the tiny grain of sand passing from the ever diminishing future, to the growing past.  That, to me, is rather depressing.  Each moment vanishes before we can actualize it as such. Kant believed that time is merely what I just described; it is a framework for comprehending our experiences.  We do not fully understand the present until we can internalize, rationalize, and process it.  By then another moment has passed.  It becomes a memory.  A memory is to me, the only portion of time we can control.  We remember as we wish.  We contain and frame our memories to best suit ourselves.   After a rather full investigation to historical definitions, I came to terms with my own realization.  We, especially in this age and time, often complain about not having enough time.  In actuality, what we need is to freeze moments of time to fully “absorb” the experiences.  To the Greeks, moments in time were a “cut” or a disturbance in a flowing duration.  Moments are those precious cuts in our lifeline that we often want to fixate and fully absorb.  Our problem is that we are just to busy to be in one place to experience.  We often over-commit and deliberately divide ourselves so while we are in one particular place, our mind is elsewhere.  We often are “ahead” of ourselves in mind, not body.  We never fully experience or absorb the now.  In essence, what I personally became concerned with is my own control over time.   Visually I considered stopping time to experience moments, hence the broken hourglass.  Each of the shadow boxes is a formal representation of shattered glass and disturbed, dislocated grains of sand.  Time is a strange thing.  We can not escape it (although we try); the only portion of time we can control is in the form of memory. Our present we do not comprehend until it becomes past and our future preoccupies the present mindset.  We maintain a link to all three sections of time, at all times.