I will write a book about time. How it goes by, but doesn't really. James Taylor says that the thing about time is that time isn't really real. I think he is right because I have noticed lately that for the things that are most important, the passage of time doesn't seem to make much difference at all. To paraphrase Faulkner, the past is ... never really past. The moments of my life that matter most to me are right here, just under the surface. They are hardly past at all. And hardly buried. There is no question these moments will be with me as long as I live.

I was wandering around a used book store the other day and came across so many treasures... from Shakespeare to Sherlock Holmes to Jane Austin... about the brain, strategy, nature, the civil war. I had a use for this one and a person for that one. Each book seemed to be a portal from where I stood to somewhere I wanted to be. As I laid my hand over the books, I could almost feel the connectedness from all I have experienced to the moments and people I long for.

From neurologist Richard Restak: “James Joyce described walking into a library in search of inspiration and aimlessly wandering around, fully expecting to encounter by chance a book relevant to the subject he was thinking of writing at the time. He expressed a basic trust in this seemingly chaotic method. I think it perfectly complemented his intensely methodical and detailed approach to writing.”

Joyce, it seems, was looking for just the right portal that would take him to where he needed to be.

My friend Restak is a neuroscientist, not a poet, so his words can be a little didactic... But let me quote him anyway... "If you want your brain to function optimally, eliminate the tendency to deal with everything in strictly chronological terms. Allow events from different times of your life to coexist in your memory. As philosopher Immanuel Kant and others have suggested, time, space, and chronology are essentially only creations of our brain. Therefore, it’s important that you do away with the idea that the world must correspond to illusions of sequence and rational order. "

Decidedly unpoetic... But I know that when I interact with my son, he is there in all his ages. I might throw my arm around his broadening shoulders, but simultaneously, I hold him in my arms as I did when he was a baby, and laugh as he plays with a hose on the driveway as a toddler. To me, the moment at hand is just the portal to so much more. These moments are there for me whenever I want them. I could not live without these times that mean so much to me. My life is all right there... in a seamless unity.

In this song (link just below), the writer deals with these issues of past, present and future. He wonders and wishes about the future, but simultaneously longs for the past and desperately wishes that he could "turn back time." As with any good art, the listener can draw his or her own connections. Some parts of this song don't relate directly to my own situation, but the theme of past, present and future, and where I'll be in the context of those I love, is one that matters to me a lot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRCNZ8JALms

As Jason Mraz says, "I am lucky to heve been where I have been." Even now... just this instant, I am somewhere far far away. No worries though, I'll be back in just a sec'.