Is time a clock? Or is this hourglass in which we muse upon the faces frozen for all time in mazy motion more of a mirror ball? I know, it's ballsy of me to strut and fret my hour upon the stage here in this little black box recording my every stroke until the last syllable of recorded... but what were we talking about again? hmmm... there would have been a -- for all that talk of measruring our lives with coffeespoons and other desultory Prufrockian conversations... but mirror, mirror on the ball who's the chariest of them all? And why is he on the run? Is he too busy being made? After all, if we can't make time stand still? What can we make? It is like that mirror ball, so full of light and motion for one so stationary so sure of itself and its suspended animaation. No time is bounded by itself, and there is no past or future. Because the past is the present--a former present to be sure, but a present nonetheless. And the future is the present--an anticipated present to be sure, but a present nonetheless. All is in motion, all is difference and deference. Time is a patient physician and we are its patients. We are under its care, it operates on us, and it has a lousy bedside manner--no small wonder so many of us want to kill that lousy alarm clock every morning!!

Roger

Many thanks, Odin. You are right. Time is our most important asset, in fact the only thing we are guaranteed. And we have no idea how much of it. 'Carpe Diem' is usually translated 'cease the day', but I think that is a Protestant effort to make us work harder, to do 'things'. I like better the one which encourages us to 'enjoy' the day. Your Time poem is a perfect contemplation of a New Year.

Time has always been one of my favorite topics right behind love
budd