Time

Time is the substance from which I am made. 

Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; 

it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; 

it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.


- Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

A Momentary Creed

I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me

it extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay 
everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me

— W.S. Merwin 
from his Pulitzer-Prize winning book 
The Shadow of Sirius (Copper Canyon Press, 2008)

Reel

Time
is but the stream
I go a-fishing in.

Its thin current
slides away, but
eternity remains.

– Henry David Thoreau
(arranged quote)

Time

Habituation is a falling asleep or
fatiguing of the sense of time;
which explains why young years
pass slowly, while later life flings
itself faster and faster upon its course.

 -- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
(arranged quote)