The last ten years I kept up a pretty rigorous press embargo. The only exception I made was an annual philosophical essay in the edge.org group founded by John Brockman in NYC. They were published in the last nine anthologies.
The new Edge Question for 2014 was just published.
I should put up a few “director’s cut” original versions, here is one for starters.
They begin with an annual question posed to the group of scientists, thinkers and artists.
even though you cannot prove it ?
To answer that I wrote a rather serious essay, but it is wrapped in a lighthearted language twist: using the concept of “Zen” and connecting it with the time metaphor “Then”.
It may sound like mere word play, but underlying that is a conundrum that has interested me for a long time - the continuity of time, and sometimes the opposite - years flying by like …so many flying things.
Of course I did not mean to denigrate Zen or any religious or other belief structure, it was merely the trigger to weave a little meandering path around these notions of time and our subjective place in it.
It still is a shade different from ‘delight’ or "pleasure" or even ‘anticipation’.
of hoping for some thing, some one, some event to happen.
We have been told by wise men, Dalais and Maharishis, that life is supposedly all about those moments themselves, that we are to cherish the second it happens and should not concern ourselves with the continuance of time… Live for the Now they will say.
of that instant in time.
the reflection, the remembrance of that time.
turns out to be … just a fat guy with a fashion issue.
…it's a bunch of molecules colliding, a bit of a mess, really.
It is not the 'real moment' that matters.
trying to uphold "the beauty of the moment - in that very moment"
is in my eyes a sad undertaking.
‘how to be a happy human’ by mastering the art of that.
and worse: the everyday routines of dealing with life's mere mechanics.
Inevitably one is forced to uphold the un-beauty of the majority of moments.
it is quite the opposite: the long phases before and after are what counts.
and done properly they will drown out the everyday humdrum to a necessary minimum.