Monday, March 29, 2010

We are not always what we seem, and almost never what we dream.

I am more afraid of the creature called Time than anything else. There is no beast more immortal or powerful than Time, and it cannot be stopped. Not ever. I am approaching a birthday next week, one which I should be excited about. Alas, Time has noticed and growled a warning at me from afar.

I have been contemplating this phrase from one of my favourite novels, Peter S. Beagle's Last Unicorn. It is part of a conversation that one of the protagonists has with a human skull, guarding the Grandfather clock in the great hall. I have an Osteology exam next week, and so I have been fondling many human skulls the past few days. I cannot help but think of the flesh that once clung to those bones, and wonder what they would say to me.
"When I was alive, I believed--as you do--that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls." Peter S. Beagle - The Last Unicorn.

1 comment:

  1. What a peculiar ocupation: it doesn't look like a game, or rite, or a habit. I think they do that to pass the time, nothing more. But time is to large, it refuses to let itself be filled up. Everything you plunge into it goes soft and slack.

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