The river of time

contemplating the weirdness of existence, time and consciousness

Have you ever misremembered a quote? Not merely scrambled the words, but actually invented a quote that doesn’t exist? I confidently went to pick up a quote for this post from Mary Renault’s book The Charioteer, which I read when I was about 15. It’s not there.

Here’s the funny thing. I remember being deeply moved by the quote that I apparently made up in my own head. In fact, I have often thought about this entirely made-up quote in the intervening years.

Stories are strange things—brains are strange things! Other authors have talked about readers telling them how moved they were by parts of their stories that…simply never happened. And I think you have to see it somehow as the spirit moving through a tale. We see what we need to see. (Though, hopefully, in a positive, helpful and healing light rather than negatively. Of course, both happen.)

But I am burying the lede here. This is actually a post about the weirdness of existence, time and consciousness, so let’s get back to what I thought happened in Mary Renault’s book.

The story begins with a little boy laying in bed in the dark. He’s wide awake and scared and as he looks up at the dark ceiling, I imagined the text went something like this: He was a fierce pulsing identity in the vast night. Why was he this? Himself, tied to these ears, these eyes, this skin? Why was his awareness fixed to this body, this being?

I was wrong, but maybe in some way I’m also right?

Time: it’s a river. This river is the Kadunce.

Sometimes I feel like I am floating on this river made of time, and it only appears to be going in one direction. I try to slip my hands through the current to say Stop! Wait! Something here doesn’t make sense!

I mean, why am I alive in THIS particular moment, rather than all the other moments that make up the stream of history, and all the moments that will presumably unwind after I shed this physical form? Why the age of computers and fossil fuels when my soul feels as if it knows ancient paths and mystical stones? (Okay, we definitely have a tendency to romanticize the past, but that’s a little different from the feeling of familiarity that stirs within me when I encounter certain places and read about certain times. Maybe you feel this too? Maybe it is the dust of all the ages that make up our souls….)

And then there is the deep peculiarity of looking up and realizing that the moment we were in has moved forward. Time has elapsed. The moment you were in a moment ago has gone. Or has it??? We can’t go back…can we? Talk about trippy!

We haven’t even dealt with the incredible strangeness of being ourselves. Since I was very young I can remember wondering (like my imaginary quote) why this was me. How did I come to be in this particular body, engaged in this particular mind, this particular way of being? What cosmic force decided that I should be born to a particular place, to particular parents?

I like to think of moments like this as stepping outside time, but maybe I am actually wading more deeply into the river, if as the physicists say everything is really happening at once. Perhaps this existential itch, this frustrating feeling that something is missing, that a perception has been dulled or a type of vision or awareness is inaccessible—perhaps this comes from the frisson of all those other times also happening. Or perhaps it comes from a kind of soul memory, the feeling that we belong to a history and awareness infinitely more vast than what appears to lie at our fingertips.

How does time feel in our skin? Where is this river taking us?

And if we are arrested by the strangeness of being confined to one single point of view, to one moving moment in the ever-flowing river, if that peculiarity gets under our skin, what does that mean? What are we?

A year or two ago I did a lot of research into near-death experiences. (Not the kind where you almost get hit by a car, the ones where you leave your body.) One of the most fascinating aspects of near-death research I read about was the question of consciousness. If some portion of ourselves, call it our soul or spirit or awareness or consciousness, is capable of flight from its bodily home…then what does that mean for us? The answer seems so obvious that we can feel a little foolish saying it. If our consciousness can depart our bodies, then there must be a part of us that exists beyond the flesh in which we are born.

Perhaps near-death experiences are liminal gateways that not only serve the experiencers themselves in some way, but society as a whole. Perhaps they help us to remember that there is more than this—and they ask us to reckon with what that means for us. Not all near-death experiences are tunnels and lights and dancing angels and the mysteries of the universe being revealed. Some are scary and some are troubling and some are just strange.

Where do we go, and why? Who are we, and why are we here, swimming in this river of time?

It’s our choice, I suppose, whether we will fight the current, or simply let it carry us, or if we will swim hungrily with it, eager to see where we are going. And of course we all do a bit of everything, probably every day.

This post is dedicated to my therapist Meena, who said to me a month or so ago, “Why don’t you write about how weird you think time is?” I’m not totally sure if this is what you had in mind, but here it is!

To everyone else: welcome to my brain. It’s usually like this in here. :)

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Ch-ch-changes…

A reminder that the Tangled Path is adjusting course in February! Here’s my current plan of action:

• February 1 or 2: Essay (about Saint/Goddess Brigid)

• February 8 or 9: Fiction or Art Share

• February 15 or 16: Essay (topic tbd, but in the vein of what you’ve been reading here since August)

• February 22 or 23: Fiction, Art or Meditation Share

In March, the biweekly Fiction/Art/etc Shares will become paid subscriber only. You will still continue to receive free essays every other week, whether you are a free or paid subscriber! In other words, if you don’t want to upgrade to a paid subscription, you don’t have to do anything; you will just receive essays every other week instead of once a week.

Why am I charging money? I am putting my fiction/art/etc shares behind a paywall because the idea of having it float around unsupervised on the internet makes me squirmy, honestly. I want to share this stuff with you guys, but I don’t want just anyone to see it.