Time Transfixed (La Durée poignardée) is a 1938 oil on canvas by Belgian surrealist René Magritte (1898-1967), now part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The title translates literally as Ongoing Time Stabbed by a Dagger. Magritte reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with the widely accepted English translation, Time Transfixed. The translation issue resonates with the theme of the poem Past Present Future? Which is Now?
Inspired by Where is Am I? and viewing poetry as akin to musical composition, I felt it fitting to create a follow-up variation on a theme. In truth, it took only moments to pen the opening line/title: Past Present Future? Which is Now? How could this not spring readily to mind, given the intense reading, writing, and research I have been immersed in for so long—scientific and philosophical alike? The line is a distillation of a significant part of my existential quest, an attempt to more deeply explore what I have long referred to as the eternal now.
Past Present Future? Which is Now? captures the tension between how we subjectively experience time and the idea that all moments—past, present, and future—are fixed and unchanging. In this static view, consciousness perceives each moment as now, while in reality, every moment already exists. This concept aligns with the philosophical idea of the eternal now, where all of time is present within each instant, even if our perception fragments it. The poem seeks to capture this interaction: the way awareness encounters different moments in time, while time itself remains constant and unchanging. It reflects my broader philosophical inquiries into the nature of reality, consciousness, and time’s interconnectedness.
Where is Am I? and Past Present Future? Which is Now? function as variations on a shared theme, much like movements in a musical composition. While they differ in focus—one on the search for identity, the other on the nature of time—they resonate with one another through recurring imagery and ideas. Both explore existential uncertainty, employing motifs of light and shadow, echoes and breath, to reflect the fragmented nature of consciousness and experience.
Where is Am I? is an introspective meditation on the self’s disjointed sense of being, while Past Present Future? extends this reflection, asking whether time—past, present, and future—exists as distinct moments or as a continuous whole. In this way, the second poem builds on the first, expanding the inquiry into personal identity toward a larger philosophical investigation of time. Together, the two poems form a stylistic and thematic unity, with the second poem deepening the existential questions introduced in the first, offering a more expansive vision of the human experience or, at least, my experience.
Past Present Future? Which is now?
Past whispers in the corners of my mind, its shadow folded into the fabric of now— but is it gone, or does it still breathe, echoing in the present’s fleeting pulse?
The future calls, a distant tremor, its promise threaded through each thought. Yet does it truly wait, or is it here already, quietly draped over the moment’s edge?
Past, present, future—are they separate streams, or one river coursing through the self, an unbroken thread of light, where time is nothing but a veil? Which is now? All and none—each breath dissolves the question, as yesterday, tomorrow, and today collapse into the eternal now.
A prehistoric footprint at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, approximately 23,000 years old. Photograph by Dan Odess, courtesy of the National Park Service.
Inspiration for poetry often arises from the most innocuous moments. The following poem emerged after I entered a room and, in a moment of confusion (more and more frequent, sadly), questioned why I had entered the room—but in my muddled state, I bungled the question. Struck by my mangled verbs, I realized the existential weight of what I had inadvertently asked myself. It instantly became clear that I should craft a short poem exploring existential uncertainty and fragmented consciousness based on what I had asked in my muddled state, and thus Where is Am I? was born.
Where is Am I?
Where is Am I? Caught between the breath and thought, a question turning circles in the hollow of my chest. I seek the ground, yet find the sky— or is it neither, just the haze of dreams long folded into day?
Am I the echo, or the voice that trembles back? The shadow of a shadow, a footfall lost to time’s soft track?
Where is Am I? A fragment drifting through the hour, a flicker in the endless light, unsure if I was ever whole or if the pieces were ever mine to find.
Four Trees, (1917. Oil on canvas) by Egon Schiele. Belvedere, Vienna.
Earlier this week, I took some time to review several hundred works by Egon Schiele (1890–1918), the Austrian Expressionist painter renowned for his intense and raw depictions of the human form. Schiele’s art, with its distinctive distorted body shapes and expressive lines, often explores themes of sexuality and self-examination, particularly in his numerous self-portraits, including nudes. Personally, I am more drawn to his other works—those that portray buildings, landscapes, and more formal sittings—not out of prudishness, but because of his unique ability to capture such scenes with an aesthetic that I appreciate. His mentor, Gustav Klimt, played a significant role in shaping Schiele’s artistic development. A broader collection of his works can be found here: Egon Schiele Overview and at the YouTube video gallery below.
While Schiele’s style is compelling, his biography is troubling, and he is not someone I would have wanted to know personally. Nonetheless, many of his works possess an undeniable aesthetic appeal, although others do not resonate with me as deeply. Two pieces that I find particularly captivating are included in this post—one featured above, and the other below (which reminded me of myself researching for an article or post).
Dr. Hugo Koller (1918, Oil on canvas) by Egon Schiele. Belvedere, Vienna.
For the record, The Cleveland Museum of Art possesses two works by Schiele, neither on display. The more interesting is below.
Portrait of a Child (Anton Peschka, Jr.), [1916, gouache, watercolor, and graphite] by Egon Schiele. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.
Because of my ongoing work on an essay tentatively titled Endless Horizons: Theories of the End of Time in a Multiverse of Block Universes, I woke early this morning with a question about the nature of memory and whether it, like physical systems, is subject to entropy. To deepen my understanding of this topic, I decided to engage ChatGPT in a research query. This also presented an opportunity to demonstrate how I ethically use ChatGPT as a research tool.
The experiment was straightforward: I formulated a fairly simple (complex?) philosophical and scientific question and asked ChatGPT for a response. ChatGPT, as previously instructed, provided authoritative sources to accompany its answer. This approach allowed me to gain immediate, well-rounded insights while ensuring I had reliable sources for further book research, should I choose to explore the topic more deeply. In addition to my own well-stocked library, I have access to resources through the local city and county libraries, as well as one of the local universities, where I am an alumnus. I also have access to other libraries associated with organizations of which I am a longstanding member. Moreover, through these libraries and their subscription databases, I have online access to a wide range of books and scholarly materials.
This process reflects my commitment to using AI as a tool to aid my scholarly inquiries—never as a replacement for rigorous research, but rather as a way to generate new questions, gather preliminary information, and identify potential sources for more thorough study.
Below is the question I posed and the response ChatGPT provided. It provides ample information for me to reflect upon and good sources for follow-up if I wanted to pursue the topic further.
My Question To ChatGPT:
Is memory merely the present attempting to retrieve the past, albeit fragmentally? This retrieval process, often redundant and incomplete, may not capture the same fragments of the past on each attempt. Alarmingly, the mind can create new memory fragments to bridge gaps, make sense of discontinuities, or even improve or alter alienating memories. However, might the past itself—the objective past we are striving to retrieve—be subject to its own form of deterioration or entropy over time, making it inherently more difficult to access as time flows forward?
ChatGPT’s Response:
The notion that memory is a fragmented, partial reconstruction of the past has long been recognized in cognitive science and philosophy. Memory, by its nature, is fallible, prone to alteration with each retrieval, and influenced by present emotions and experiences. As you rightly point out, the process of memory retrieval is often redundant, incomplete, and subject to creative interpolations by the mind to make sense of what is forgotten or unclear. This invites the deeper inquiry: Is the “objective past” itself subject to entropy, rendering it less retrievable over time?
To explore this question, we must examine both subjective memory—the internal representation of past events—and the objective past—the events themselves as they occurred in time.
Memory and Reconstruction:
Cognitive science has demonstrated that human memory is reconstructive rather than reproductive. Each retrieval is a dynamic process, during which the brain reassembles fragments of stored information to form a coherent narrative of the past. This phenomenon is supported by work from Elizabeth Loftus, a pioneer in the study of false memories, who demonstrated how suggestibility and the passage of time can alter or create new memories. Her research suggests that memory is not merely a passive storage but an active process subject to distortion (Loftus, 1997).
The brain’s capacity to fill gaps in memory, to “improve” or distort unpleasant recollections, can be seen as a kind of psychological entropy, where the once-clear memory of an event becomes increasingly disordered with each retrieval. As you suggest, this process can indeed make it difficult to capture the same fragment of the past with each attempt.
The Objective Past and Entropy:
Your inquiry into whether the “objective past” itself is subject to entropy requires an exploration of philosophical and scientific thought. In one sense, the past, as it existed in time, is immutable. It has occurred and is fixed in the timeline of the universe. This perspective aligns with the Block Universe theory in physics, where all points in time—past, present, and future—exist simultaneously in a four-dimensional spacetime continuum. Under this model, the past is not subject to degradation; it simply is (Callender, 2010).
However, while the objective past may remain fixed, our access to it is mediated by subjective memory, which is indeed subject to entropy. Neurological studies, such as those by Karl Lashley in his research on engrams, suggest that memory retrieval is dependent on the integrity of neural circuits. Over time, these circuits degrade due to aging, injury, or disease, making it more difficult to retrieve specific memories (Lashley, 1950).
This entropic degradation in the brain mirrors the second law of thermodynamics, which states that systems naturally progress toward disorder. Just as physical systems decay, so too do the biological systems that support memory, causing retrieval to become more fragmented, incomplete, and distorted over time.
Philosophical Considerations on Memory and Entropy:
Philosophically, the question of whether the past itself is subject to entropy touches on deep metaphysical issues. The philosopher Henri Bergson proposed that memory is not a simple retrieval of static information but an active synthesis of the past and present. Bergson argued that our experience of time is fluid, and memory plays an essential role in shaping that experience. As such, memory’s entropic decay may reflect our subjective relationship with time rather than any inherent deterioration in the past itself (Bergson, 1896).
In cognitive psychology, Daniel Schacter explored the “seven sins of memory,” one of which is transience—the natural decay of memory over time. Schacter’s work highlights how memories fade and distort as they become more distant from the present. While the events of the past remain fixed, our mental representation of them becomes increasingly subject to entropy, making retrieval more challenging as time passes (Schacter, 2001).
Conclusion:
In conclusion, while the objective past may remain untouched by time’s passage, existing as a fixed point in the spacetime continuum, our access to it through memory is undeniably subject to entropy. Neurological and cognitive processes that support memory deteriorate over time, rendering our recollections increasingly fragmentary, incomplete, and prone to distortion. Memory’s entropic nature reflects the broader theme of disorder and decay that governs all physical systems. Thus, while the past itself remains fixed, our ability to access it diminishes with time—a poignant reminder of the impermanence of human cognition.
References:
Bergson, H. (1896). Matter and Memory. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
Callender, C. (2010). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press.
Lashley, K. (1950). In Search of the Engram. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 15, 1-24.
Loftus, E. (1997). Creating False Memories. Scientific American, 277(3), 70-75.
Schacter, D. L. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
L’Umana Fragilita (Human Frailty, oil on canvas, 1656) by Salvator Rosa. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
“O glorious day when I shall retire from this crowd, this turmoil, and join that divine council and assembly of souls” — Cicero
Cicero reflects on death as a natural and not to be feared part of life. One of his most famous passages reads: “Death is not a matter of sorrow, because it releases us from the prisons of the body and brings us to our natural rest. If death is an end to consciousness, it is like a deep and eternal sleep. If, however, the soul lives on, we have nothing to fear, for we will join those who have already passed.”
Here, Cicero expresses two possibilities for death: either it brings a peaceful, eternal sleep or allows the soul to join those who have passed before, both of which alleviate the fear of death. The first possibility, that death brings the end of consciousness and a restful, eternal sleep, presents death as a final release from the burdens of mortal life. In this scenario, time ceases for the individual, as their consciousness no longer experiences its passage. The second possibility, in which the soul lives on, imagines a continued existence where the soul joins the company of others who have passed, in a realm beyond the constraints of earthly time.
Building on this latter idea, Cicero envisions the soul departing from the mortal world and entering a “divine council” of virtuous souls. He writes: “O glorious day when I shall retire from this crowd, this turmoil, and join that divine council and assembly of souls, and when I shall depart from this life to live with them!” In this vision, the soul is no longer bound by the physical limitations of the body or the linear progression of time. It enters a state of peace, free from the turmoil of earthly life, and becomes part of an eternal realm where time as we know it no longer applies. This divine assembly offers a vision of death as a transition into a timeless existence, where the soul continues without the burdens of decision-making, moral struggles, or the passage of time.
This vision aligns remarkably well with modern cosmological theories, particularly the Block Universe model, which arises from Einstein’s theory of relativity. In this model, time is viewed not as something that flows but as a static dimension. The Block Universe posits that past, present, and future all exist simultaneously within a four-dimensional spacetime continuum. Every moment—whether in the past, present, or future—exists eternally and is as real as any other moment. The flow of time, as we perceive it, is an illusion generated by our consciousness. In this framework, time does not move; rather, we, as conscious beings, experience it as though we are moving through it.
When Cicero speaks of the soul’s release from the turmoil of earthly life and its subsequent joining with other souls, he touches on a concept that can be reconciled with the Block Universe. In his vision, the soul continues to exist, but it is no longer bound by the temporal constraints of human existence. It no longer perceives time as a sequence of moments passing one after another. Instead, the soul becomes part of an eternal now—much like the fixed moments in the Block Universe model. In this state, the soul experiences the peace of being embedded in time’s eternal structure without the torment of consciousness or the burden of decision-making.
In both Cicero’s philosophical framework and the Block Universe model, time continues to exist objectively, but for the individual, time’s significance vanishes with the cessation of perception. This alignment suggests that the end of time, in a subjective sense, is not the end of the universe’s temporal structure, but the end of an individual’s experience of time. The soul, in Cicero’s understanding, remains part of the universe, but without the active engagement of temporal consciousness.
What makes this comparison particularly compelling is the shift from seeing death as a terrifying end to perceiving it as a transition into a timeless existence. For Cicero, death frees us from the burdens of morality and decision-making—tasks that are so deeply tied to our experience of time. Similarly, in the Block Universe, once consciousness fades, we are no longer participants in the dynamic flow of time but become part of the static, eternal structure of existence.
In essence, both Cicero and the Block Universe propose that the end of time is not a destruction or cessation of reality, but rather the cessation of our perception of time’s flow. While the soul may continue to exist in an ethereal state, it does so in a manner detached from the sequential experience of time. Thus, the soul’s existence in this eternal now is one of peace, free from the weight of decisions and the suffering caused by the relentless march of time.
Through this lens, we might reinterpret Cicero’s contemplation of death and the soul’s journey as a profound early philosophical insight into a truth later echoed by modern physics: the possibility of eternal existence within a timeless framework, where the flow of time is merely a byproduct of human perception. In death, the soul may continue within the Block Universe—no longer tormented by the passage of time, but instead, eternally present in the cosmic order.
Works Relied Upon While Preparing This Essay:
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Senectute. Translated by William Armistead Falconer. Harvard University Press, 1923.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Tusculan Disputations. Translated by J. E. King. Harvard University Press, 1927.
Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. Translated by Robert W. Lawson. Crown Publishers, 1961.
Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. Bantam Books, 1988.
Rovelli, Carlo. The Order of Time. Riverhead Books, 2018.
Northcoast Antiquarian 