CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

;II'ltlptl,\ is lliis Slllllilli llf, 11(1 hv (i('( llgC rvh 11 J',;tIl: "A hl'lful hllSY1H'SS «t
'hill (iIlH." :IIH.1 n'slkss IHOV(.'IIIt'lll from lI(lvt' lly III l1t)vdly hury :til ever­
present sense of futility anll vacu(\usness. In the millst of his endless
achievements, modern man is losing the suhstance uf human life."''''
Loren Eisely once described "a feeling of inexplicable terror," as if he
and his companion, who were examining a skull, were in thc path of "a
torrent that was sweeping everything to destruction." Understanding
Eiscly's sensation completely, his friend paraphrased him as saying, "to
know time is to fear it, and to know civilized time is to be terror­
strieken."" Given the history of time and our present plight in it, it
would bc hard to imagine a more prescient bit of communication.
In the J 9605 Robert Lowell gave succinct expression to the extremity
of the alienation of time:
I am learning to live in history.
What is history? What you cannot touch.lOO
Fortunately, also in the '60s, many others were beginning the unlearn­
ing of how to live in history, as evidenced by the shedding uf wristwatch­
es, the use of psychedelic drugs, and paradoxically perhaps, by the
popular single-word slogan of the French insurrection aries of May
1968-"Quick!" The clement of time refusal in the revolt of the '60s was
strong and there arc signs-such as the revolt against work-that it
continues to deepen even as it contends with extreme new spatializations
of time.
Since Marcuse wrote of "the alliance between time and the order of
repression,"'01 and Norman O. Brown on the sense of time or history as
a function of repression, Hn the vividness of the connection has puwerfully
grown.
Christopher Lasch, in the late '70s, noticed that " A profound shift in
our sense of time has transformed work hahits, values, and the definition
of success."'OJ And if work is heing refused as a key component of time,
it is also becoming obvious how consumption gobbles up time alive.
Today's perfect spatial symbol of the latter is the Pac-Man video game
figure, which literally eats up space to kill time.'o,
As with Aldous Huxley's Mr. Propter, millions have come to find time
"a thing intrinsically nightmarish."'os A fixation with age and the pro­
longevity movement, as discussed by Lasch and others, are two signs of
its torment. Adorno once said, "As the subjects live less, death grows
more precipitous, more terrifying."'06 There seems to be a new genera­
tion among the young virtually every three or four years, as time, growing
more palpable, has accelerated since the '60s. Science has provided a
popular reflection of time resistance in at least two phenomena; the
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of the \0 calkd geological romances, slich as John McPhee's IIm·ill IIlld
Range (I 'IX t ) .
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