On the eve of my 39th birthday, Im giving thought to how, in much the same way that time sneaks up on us, we sneak up on ourselves. Consciously, Im pretty resistant to the notion of retrospective thinking around milestones like birthdays and New Years--it strikes me as artifice, contrivance. And yet for the last couple of weeks Ive been doing that very thing without even meaning to, thinking about family and my old man, marveling at the fact that its been a decade since I finished my first book, assessing whether Im heading in the right direction with my work and my life. And only tonight, as Im about to enter my 40th year, do I realize Ive been engaged in precisely the sort of stock-taking that I think Im so disdainful of. In the novel Im working on now, the theory of relativity serves as a centerpiece, primarily because it indicates that no one ever really dies, that whats done once is, in a real and scientifically demonstrable way, done forever. What relativity tells us is that because of the way our brains are wired, were slaves to an inaccurate sense of how time functions--flowing in one direction inexorably, each moment lost to us as soon as it passes. But the truth is were not actually trapped in this misapprehension of time. The last two weeks, when Ive been simultaneously occupying the past, present, and future, have demonstrated that to me.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 01:22:03 +0000