Quelle heure est-il?

Several themes have been in my thoughts lately, Time paramount among them. Time because we really only have One, also known as Now. I remind myself of this because take your pick, the past or the future are overwhelming beasts. I also remind myself of Now because it makes me feel a lot happier, even if I find myself at the Post Office, waiting in line for a woman I don't know anything about to help me send an old camera to Belarus. When we go out, so many strangers are in our peripheral vision, just floating about in our present then vanishing as they are magnetized into their next moments and we to ours. We generally don't notice each other, because we are not thinking of the Now, we are thinking of the Next. But it's easier to be genuinely nice to someone you don't know if you concentrate on the moment you are actually experiencing. And it's easier to be mean if you are thinking about the future (or the past)!

These thoughts about Now crept up after reading Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. In one important segment, a woman of about 70 gives a long speech to a boy of 16 in love with her niece. The Aunt tells the boy a long, rich story of love and loss, the sum of which is, "There is not what might have been; there is only what was, and what is." I love it! It keeps me rooted lately....