A Cacophony of Moments

Posting has been light lately. This is a hellish time of the school year, with end of semester work starting to flow in and trying to get our team solidified for next summer's trip to Kenya. I should resume normal frequency here in a week or so.

But for now let me share a snippet of something I read this week that stood out to me on a topic near and dear to my heart: time. Every now and then when you're reading a murder mystery novel you are struck by a profound insight into the nature of life. This is from Noah Hawley's recent book Before the Fall.

Because what if instead of a story told in consecutive order, life is a cacophony of moments we never leave?  What if the most traumatic or the most beautiful experiences we have trap us in a kind of feedback loop, where at least some part of our minds remains obsessed, even as our bodies move on?

Isn't that so good? Doesn't life feel that way at times? I love the minor dualism of the quote: our bodies have moved on but our minds stay entranced by past catastrophic experiences. In a sense that is hard to articulate we never leave those vital moments in life. We can close our eyes and relive them, be transported back by a scent or a vague reminder in a book or the face of a stranger or the way the sun plays through the trees.

We try to convince ourselves that time is linear because it has explanatory power and helps to keep life intelligible, but the moments that blow up this construction--that hook us into the feedback loop or circular time that Hawley describes--are frequent enough to cause doubt. And anything that smashes the power of time is alright by me.