24 April

Memory. This is Henri Bergson, long dead. Nobel Prize winner. Bergson realised that memories aren't in our heads. He showed that when we have a memory, we're not going into our heads, we're re-entering the past itself, which never left. The past isn't 'in the past', time doesn't flow along like a river, leaving the past behind. It's right here, now, at every moment, in potential form, ready to be reactivated again. About the same time Marcel Proust wrote about this in his novel, how eating a piece of cake literally transported him momentarily to a time in his childhood - he felt it and smelled it as if he was there again. He WAS there again, for that moment, it never left. We've all had those moments of being plunged 'back in time', often from tastes or smells. Eternity is the potential or virtual that coexists with our actual (what we call 'physical') lives. These words are virtual, eternal things, that I'm using right now.