June 18, 2008

• A Meditation on History

  The present moment has the illusion of being more present than moments have been in the past.  When thinking of history, it seems like time flew by through all the kings, wars, and noteworthy individuals, but now time is here.  And here it will stay.  It seems the past, summarized in our minds in quick concepts, was fast forwarded to the present moment for our existence to take place; it is as though reality in the past never seemed to people like it does to us in the present, as a slowly progressing reality with a blank canvas of a future.  It does not seem like the past happened at the same rate as the present is happening, but rather much faster.  But this is simply time and the mind playing devilish tricks on us. 

  The past happened at the exact same speed as the present, the only difference is that the past is finished and your life is not.  But slowly and ever so surely, the past sucks you into its abyss of nonbeing, slowly drawing in your existence like a whirpool down a drain.  Like gossamer, our physical being slowly unravels into the wind off our backs.  And the absorption of your existence into the muffled and immobile past is inevitable; indeed, history is a long record of it having happened to every person. 

  When you read the name of a historical figure on the pages of a book, you are witnessing him in his paralyzed state;  his name written there is simply his place on the victim’s list, gagged and motionless like the rest of history’s prisoners.  Some people say they love history because ‘it is alive’; how confused they are, for history is a communal grave, where all persons who were once animated and talkative beings have now been eternally frozen. 

  Despite its ubiquity and surety, civilization remains casual and oblivious in the midst of this unending bloodbath at the hands of time.  Do they expect it to stop one day?  Such would be foolishness to hope that the very villain at work will soon negate his own project. 

  The present moment is merely the edge of the tidal wave of time which is consuming all of mankind as it surges into the future, pulling humans into the enormous ocean of blood which is the past.  Yet though this monster lurks right behind them, people continue facing forward, unaware that they will be gagged and bound for eternity in only a moment as well.

  It is amazing and profoundly peculiar that people should have clocks in their houses, on their mantles, right in the open where everyone can see; it is a murderer on display, indeed, showing the murder take place!  People should be outraged and offended when they see a clock, grabbing it furiously and asking, “Why do you continue?  Why are you killing us all every second?  Are you laughing at your cruel joke?  Is this your idea of a joke?  Stop.  I said stop.  Stop, I say, stop, stop, stop!  Commonplace trinket!  Wretched murderer!”  The man smashes the clock on the ground and walks away quickly.  He looks at his hands, feels his abdomen.  “Is it happening now?  I seem fine.  But no.  I am dying.  We are all dying.”  And all around him the man watches as the crowds enjoy exploring and living in their gas chamber of a home.  “Life is a death march,” the man thinks, “and no one even knows.”

  After raindrops form, they have a short fall but then disappear instantly upon hitting the ground.  Humans are the same; their life is a short fall before they land at death and likewise disappear into the ground, as though they were never even there.  Also like raindrops, humans are very small and fall quickly and in great numbers.  But sometimes a person will go to sleep, and when he has awoken a storm has happened in the night, though he slept right through it.  Because history quickly unravels, and afterwards it seems it has always been done with, humanity is like a storm that happens during the slumber of the universe.

  If a person’s day does not go so bad, then they will perhaps have hardly noticed the time, but when they arrive home they find that a friend had an excrutiatingly long day because of the suffering they experienced during it.  But to the person who had a fine day, the slow and miserable time that the other person endured seems to have never happened.  Now that they are together, the person’s suffering is over, and thus to the first person it seems the suffering must not have seemed long, for it happened during the same time as the day which seemed to fly so quickly.  So it will be with the universe at the end of our lives; to the universe, as though nothing happened, though we suffered through every second.

  Life does not take time.  Time takes life. 

  • 1:28 am
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