Van Dyke Brown Series
On the Witness and Temporality of Life - 2021
Fallen Joshua Tree, Ryolite, NV, 2021.
When we all die our flesh and bones will be carbon no different from the earth. The irony of life is its temporality, and the perspectives we create to define a long or short life is easily mutable.
It only takes a short time to pass for you to see the perspective of time change and realize how easily it's pace increases. The lifespan of trees make jealous of men who may never reach their age or height.
Living in our restricted perspectives of time, we are finite and small. We see mayflies who live mere days at the most, yet we dare ask to live long happy lives. We illustrate our happy lives in the memories of the past, and the more memories we have the more fruitful that time might seem. Regardless of the rewards life gives us, fortunate or poor, we are given the day's time in a day and the 2.5 billion or so heart beats in a life. How we measure that time is up to each and every one of us.
We can change our perspectives of time and meaningfulness simply by being present. What happens to the present when we are locked into the past, or querying the future? It distracts then occupies the present.
Creek Dwelling Tree, Madison, TN, 2021.
The time it takes to live is not equal to the time it takes to return to the earth, yet we put value in the life experienced more. Our witness to time has a chief effect on our drive to experience more, or give up. Eventually all beings whether human, flora, fauna or microbe must succumb to the inevitable.
In the end we all experience one hundred percent of our life, divided by memories or not. Each fraction of time is relative to the ones before it and so our time is not so fleeting; it is always complete by the end of a lifecycle no matter the length. Not to sound so morbid, but the present is all we have at the moment of thought and the length of time, and what you did prior to and after, is not a defining factor of that moment in the present.
Identity is a scape we paint in our minds with our memories. When dementia affects the brain, the view of identity changes--- some become who they were, or no-one at all. It is the opposite effect of a baby learning who it it is, reversed in some sardonic way to remind us that we all return to that faithful earth just like the trees. All we have to hold faith is that others may carry our memories.
Dust to dust, sand and dirt, earth, soil, decay. The passing, the rebirth.
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