Presence Across Time

I had to bring my digital camera to work the other day to take some pictures of the building for a contractor. I was at work when I realized this, so I decided to use the power of google calendar to my advantage. I popped open my web browser, made an entry for 5:40am, and set a reminder to be sent to my phone via text message.

The next morning, I’m up at 5:30am getting ready for the gym, brushing my teeth, getting clothes together, checking email, and WHAM, my cell phone goes off, I get the reminder and throw the camera into my bag. Success.

I’ve had similar success before, but for some reason this time it really hit me how damn cool what happened actually was. In reality, my mindfulness in one moment translated into increased mindfulness in another. The second my phone started buzzing, I knew exactly what it was for before I even looked at the screen. The entire rhythm of my morning changed, and not just because it reminded to get my camera, but that it also reminded me to be aware. That moment the day before was connected to my moment that morning in a weird sort of time travel, and I suddenly found myself present in both moments.

I’ve always been fascinated by the feeling obtained in that state; in school days I used to giddily skip 50 pages ahead in notebooks and leave myself notes, knowing I’d stumble across them much later in the year. There’s something about time realization that always causes an immediate perspective shift for me, as I however briefly find myself suddenly occupying both the present moment and whatever moment the initial time trigger was created in. I suppose it’s a type of presence across time, an immediate felt body realization of the fact that there really only ever is one moment, and that’s right now.

Presence across time is something that has only really become a possibility with the birth of new technologies. In years passed, the only traces of a person left would be bones, and the memories of those that new them.

The emergence of art & writing took this to a new level, now bits of experience were left on cave walls or in books, which themselves might decay over time. Now we have the digital age, an age of bits and bytes which are seemingly immune to time. Suddenly, anything ever written or written henceforth has no reason to ever disappear, and is instantly available to everyone. Stuart Davis mentioned how this was affecting modern artists once when we were in the car. In his case, how not only does he have to compete with other up and coming bands, but he’s competing with all music created through time. Someone might choose to listen to Bach instead of him even easier than turning on the radio used to be. The growing attention economy is hard on mediocre works……creations that may have been minor hits in their time likely won’t even be a blip in the oncoming wave of information and media..

Mindfulness & Attention; now weaving through time in novel ways. good days to be alive.

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