As Memory, As Anticipation
Awareness of the passing of time is internal,
integral to the mind as traces left in the brain
by the past.
Augustine’s exposition as such is quite beautiful,
based as it is on our experience of music.
Listening to a hymn the meaning of sound is given
by sounds that came before and after.
Music can occur only in time, but if we are always
in the present moment how can we possibly hear it?
Augustine says, it’s because our consciousness is based
on memory and anticipation. A song is, in some way,
present in our minds in unified form held together by
that which we take time to be.
So, this is what time is: entirely in the present,
in our mind as memory,
as anticipation.
by Carlo Rovelli
from ‘The Order of Time”
Riverhead Books, NY, 2018
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