In No Time At All

The original task of a genuine revolution is never mererly to 'change the world' but also and above all to change time. 

Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History




Sometimes, little phrases can reveal big things....

Take the title of this post for example. It was only when I was cycling back from this morning's outing (outing the Self), that I thought to myself, 'God! I'm back already'. It almost seemed instantaneous, the 3 hour duration from leaving my flat to arriving back in it. I wondered how this was possible that no time could have passed whilst all the clocks said differently

.

I thought of what I had written about 'being the territory' and 'slipping out of time' years ago when I lived in Warsaw and had an epiphany much like today's about being extemporaneous.

http://wandersthroughwarsaw.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/map-is-not-territory-it-is-one-of-great.html

 

I then considered the phrase that had just popped out of my head - in no time at all. At first, it was just 'in no time' but of course the normal collocation is 'in no time at all'. It was then that I understood!

To be 'at all' is to be one with the earth in the same way that Mallarme's chirping cricket or Wallace Steven's singing blackbird is one. We have, unperturbed by time and its pressures, transcended our society-bound selves and entered into our true Selves. In that instant we have become the land itself. Time exists, sure, but in a whole different way to what we have been taught, and to how we ourselves have been tabled. We have time-space out here, not time. Indeed, one might add 'mind' to this mix too, a mind that, furthermore, has been emptied of all extraneous detail. In the space left behind, the mind enters a sort of reverie and waking dream state. Time is no longer felt; it is absorbed. 

In this sense, we can say with complete impunity, even with regards to a life and not just a three hour cyclic excursion (is life not part of a cyclic excursion anyway?), that this 'event' has passed 'in no time at all'....

A flock of whooper swans over Neilston flying south.