Eternally Now

One of my favorite literary characters of all time is the dragon in John Gardner's Grendel. She's a time philosopher in the same fashion as Dr. Manhattan or the aliens from Slaughterhouse Five or Faraday in Lost (SIGH). At one point she argues with Grendel about the future. Just because she knows the future, she says, doesn't mean she can change it, and doesn't mean she necessarily had any pivotal role in its execution. Even knowledge of the future, even actions taken with the intent to prevent it, are all part of the vast unchanging loop of causality. For in no universe, in no instance did the poor, hapless protagonist not know his fate.

Kundera took the notion a bit more literally in Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which history repeats itself over and over again, and all things will happen have happened already, and at the end of time, as the universe collapses in on itself, it creates again an unwitting embryo of all things to come.

I tend not to believe in fate, or even in a destiny. But I do believe that life comes with a sense of should-be, and that somewhere in the subconscious of the individual and the collective human race, we perceive a future ideal, a great shining conclusion to the story of planet earth, and those desiring to be good people strive toward that ideal their whole lives, like tiny ants pulling a boulder across the Sahara.

Once in a car in Michigan Ep told me about some theologian or other who believes that all things are Eternally Now, that everything happens always, and that it is only a function of human limitation that we should perceive time as happening one instant after the other. Basically, that the future informs the present as much as the past.

I like this idea too, generally enough to believe in it. I think our ability to reasonably predict the future is just as significant as our ability to faultily remember the past. I think that knowledge of causality and nature, in couplet with instincts, is the future's way of communicating with us.

I believe very strongly in trusting your instincts. Our instincts press toward the future ideal (if you listen to them and are not evil).

I stood in line at Starbucks. Starbucks has made a trend of fair-trade, which is a bit like Madonna making a trend of Kaballa, but there are more harmful things in this world to quibble about. John had just called me to tell me that the company where he interviewed decided not to call him back for a second interview. It's been three months since he graduated. Three months of no income.

We had decided that this was it. We've tried so hard to find work, we've given up our passions to make a living, we've strung our guts out across Mass Ave. and still no fruit. So this job was it. If he didn't get it, we were moving to Washington D.C. at the end of April, after his installation went up.

In the line at Starbucks, after John called, it occured to me that there was a contradiction in my two beliefs: 1) the Future Ideal acting on our desires and 2) all things being Eternally Now. Because it's highly unlikely that the Future Ideal will actually happen, how can the future (probably quite a sad, violent, dystopian one)really inform the present? How can we feel the presense of an ideal conclusion that will probably never happen?

I had an epiphany. Of course! It's not just one future that informs us, it's infinite variations of the future that informs us. And will every successive decision we eliminate more of those variations. But perhaps we don't elimate them from existence, we just eliminate them from our own lives. Perhaps somewhere, in some alternative dimension, we live the decisions we never made.

I bought John a London Fog as a consolation for not being hired. But the thought of moving to D.C. brought a feeling of immense relief. I'm not happy here. I want to be happy, but I've become a brittle survival machine, a tired sack of life. D.C. feels right to me, and maybe Boston has become so impossible because that alternative future doesn't exist for me. Maybe it never happened.

The days are longer now. The late afternoon sun shines through the windows of the train. I have daylight on my side again.