The Week That Was

The Question as posed:

I suggest we all consider what we experienced and discovered in the 12-18 September week. For Betsy and me, it will be an all-consuming week of Celebrations, for Brian a week of being away on an annual pilgrimage, for John and Wende and Deborah possibly what they discovered as they observed and participated in the Event at our house, and maybe for Maureen a report on the sociopolitical temperature of the DC pressure cooker... or whatever arises, right down to our old favorite ?how ya doin'?

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It occurred to me that those 60 years could be viewed quinquennially, and seen as five Acts:

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A lot of the current thoughts have to do with Time, in its many plumages. Mid-September is always like that for me, because of the Birthday. Among the Exhibits:

This insect is only seen in mid-September, and only for a few days. That's one sort of Time, well worth contemplating. And in the preceding fortnight I had been working on Objects of Contemplation and Time as a candidate for a Question, and wrestling with both of those Capital Letter rabbit holes, but concluded that it was too unwieldy and overthought for Convivium.

As for the Question of 'experienced and discovered', the week has surely been a reminder that Time Flows, and that there is perpetual Surprise in Its Own Unfolding. Each day is different in its opportunities and challenges; progress is always a possibility. Scarcely a Revelation, more perhaps a Reminder: What Happens Next is in our own hands, and the hands of the Fates. The latter we can do little to affect; the former should be as creative and satisfying as we can manage.

Those thoughts nudged me to yet another look at Montaigne, and I remembered that I had read Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer a few years ago, via Kindle. I looked again at my Kindle Notebook from that pass (maybe 10 years ago?) and was delighted with what I had highlighted as an effective precis of the book.

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And then just in Time on Wednesday afternoon, Maria Popova checks in with The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of Time and How to Be More Fully Alive, in which she links to What Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone, and in that one is a link to James Gleick on How Our Cultural Fascination with Time Travel Illuminates Memory, the Nature of Time, and the Central Mystery of Human Consciousness ...which provoked a couple of Kindle orders. With friends like this... all I need is Time to read mooooore...

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