Skip to main content

In Search of Time

Time as colored on the Helmsley Building
Time is all we have. Never more realized than walking to New York Penn Station when I'm trying to catch a train. 

At some point on my walk earlier this week from Grand Central Station, past Bryant Park, down Broadway, and over 34th at 8th where I got an unobstructed view of the Empire State Building, I contemplated about time. Of course, there is the classic novel "In Search of Lost Time", by Proust, who documented in excruciating detail his day-to-day living, transcending the mundane to reveal the humanity of our existence. Or so I have gathered from reading Alain de Botton who wrote about his discoveries of Proust in his popular philosophical wanderings. These thoughts caused pause, at least inside my head, as I briskly traversed the streets and avenues to make my train. I was walking in NYC, after all.

It takes time to write this post. It could have been time spent on other pursuits: a deliverable for work, a meeting, a coffee with a friend. These are all decisions to make, to "invest" the time we have. Which is a fancy way of saying that I passed time writing this post, and if I did something else (or nothing at all), I still passed the time. Whether we like it or not, time keeps moving towards its inevitable conclusion. In search of time, we will always find it in the moment - good to know because if you are searching for time, you have effectively discovered it.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sunny Day Bay

There is a certain energy that winds through the office near happy hour on Friday late afternoon, like the feeling of the last few minutes of school before summer break. The work is done for the week, the bags start to pack with computers and pens and notebooks, and people start to smile again. Sometimes, there is actual laughter in the office. Outside, the sun is shining in San Francisco today. The bay sparkles something special, if one can avoid the snarled traffic painting the bridges. For me, this is no worry - I walk home, through the Financial District and down Columbus Street through the middle of North Beach. I know I am close to home when I hear the Powell-Taylor cable car clanking down the hill, last stop headed for Fisherman's Wharf at the base of Bay Street. Now, it is Friday late afternoon; my bag is packing with its own pens and notebooks (soon, computer too). I am smiling as well. I can feel happiness soon to think of the sun at my back walking past Vesuvio ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spring Cleaning (better late than never)

Memorial Day weekend came and went like the thunderstorms that rumbled on Sunday evening here in the DC area. I thought that a three-day weekend would be just the cure for a crazy-busy schedule the past month (work projects blowing up all over the mainstream news, wedding planning, homeownership nicks & nacks, getting my personal affairs in order, travels, and stealing a moment for reflection), but it turned out that the only salvation was that the next weekend was now only 4 days away. Oh yeah, and a great friend was going to be in town in the upcoming week but that is the topic of another post. Still, I tried to make the best of the extra out-of-work time - which got funneled right back into homeowner activities (and what else does a homeowner do except spend free time keeping up with whatever is going on around and inside the home?). To be more specific, I took to cleaning up the "jungle", Wendy's vividly wonderful description of our backyard's overgrowth. I...
1 comment
Read more

Musical Nostalgia

I had a bout of musical nostalgia this afternoon as I was listening to Rufus Wainwright and compiling a powerpoint presentation for work. Two years ago, I remember the CD's of this self-styled (and modish) modern-day troubador. He was (and, I presume, continues to be) an "inside" kind of star with celebrities and hipsters (they like what is "hot" before us mortals do) for classical and dramatically-infused pop melodies. Those style-makers viewed him as "getting" pop like not many other contemporaries did; I just happened to like the songs, even if some were adopted as funkified dance anthems in gay clubs (convenient that Rufus is also gay, so he did not mind the mixing). Anyhow, I remember Rufus for his musical companionship in some turbulent NYC days, dealing as he did in his album "Want One" with regrettably lost loves and solemnness for the life he led on the road; I felt the same in those days as a consultant traversing the US between NYC...
Post a Comment
Read more