Epilogue: Crafting Time

In Newtonian physics, time is absolute, a universally uniform reality. Physics and philosophy since Newton have recognized Einstein’s claim to the contrary. Time is not simply out there, according to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It depends on the human presence of its observer. “Time is … not a real process, not an actual succession that I am content to record. It arises from my relation to things” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 478). And Henri Bergson had already insisted that “it is impossible to imagine or conceive of a connecting link between the before and the after without an element of memory, consequently, of consciousness” (Bergson, 2014, p. 254). Time is some manner of collaboration of culture and nature. To that end, no one put the matter more poignantly than Jorge Luis Borges: “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire” (Borges, 1964, p. 234). In this epilogue I want to suggest that the crafting of time is an art practiced in everything human beings do, an intuitive discernment that shapes narrative, ritual, work, and play. Put simply, as a kind of poesis, crafting time is how human beings craft themselves in the great diversity of ways they do.