A decent writer doesn’t know it all. He knows, at the very least, the traditions that arose from the pen, from consciousness, from the confrontation with reality. At least he knows those. Brothers and sisters are strewn throughout time ready for a tap on the shoulder from a spirit in the future.

Were they conscious of the future, of us? In a way, perhaps, but they knew they had to live in their own time, their own world.

And there were, apparently, worlds upon worlds, most of which disappear totally.

And they were conscious that human beings repeat the day, week, month, year and whole lifetime with basic animal needs. But that something stretches beyond this to create ornament, art, and culture. The universals are never destroyed.

And when one is conscious of this… what? There is a shocking feeling of power, of seeing how impotent the past was in dealing with their own situation. And then a quick dismissal of all they had to teach. "Teach? They had to learn a great deal more." That is the quintessential modern attitude. Of course we set ourselves up the same way. We will mutate in ways we can not know and probably wouldn't want to know. But if we rob the past of its glorious triumphs don't we rob ourselves as well? And then what are we but pathetic and dumb victims of time, not even at the level of a plant because a plant does everything in its power to become what it is seeded to become.

When a period of time disintegrates it is a very telling thing. A kind of recovery mode is called on.

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