"The Passage of Time"

The photograph is of Salvador Dali’s 1931 painting “The Persistence of Memory,” which depicts what was his sense of the fluidity and subjectivity in the nature of time. While my taste in art runs to the more conventional, especially Connecticut Impressionists and grandchildrens’ art, this is a painting I have always found fascinating.

 

It is my belief that we each find the passage of time unique to ourselves.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The Passage of Time”

October 12 , 2025

 

“It has all gone so fast, Duke. Like a dream.

How is it the days crawl by and yet the years fly?”

                                                                                                                Lawrence Sanders (1920-1998)

                                                                                                                The Anderson Tapes, 1970

 

When asked about the phrase “the passage of time,” Chat GPT responded, it “...is the perception of the continuous, forward movement of the past through the present and into the future.” When one is happy time passes more quickly than when one is sad, yet the passage of time is real. As the second-hand ticks forward, the present becomes the past.

 

But perception of the lapse of time can differ from reality. While the years since my birth have been historically significant, I don’t think of them in an historical sense, and 1941 does not seem that far back; yet 84 years before I was born it was 1857, which does seem a long time ago. It was the year of the Mountain Meadow massacre in Utah and the year the last Mughal emperor surrendered to the British in Delhi. Franklin Pierce was still President and Lincoln would not be sworn in for another four years.

 

Yet memories consume me. In the wee small hours of the morning, when the bedroom is dark and morning seems eons away, my mind travels backward, in kaleidoscopic-like fashion, to images from long ago – walking with my maternal grandfather to “Bruin’s lair,” a place in the Connecticut woods where he told me a friendly bear lived; having my older sister dress me in her Mary Janes; missing the school bus to which I had had to walk just shy of a mile; watching my father milk the goats, and then, later, slow-walking to his studio to confess I had broken a window. Childhood memories stick with us, perhaps because, as Ian McEwan wrote in The Child in Time: “For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present.”

 

And there are other memories that collectively depict the passage of time – taking my first flight at age 13, on a DC-3, from Keene, New Hampshire to the Adirondack Airport near Saranac Lake, with a change at newly-named Laguardia Airport; my first car, a 1947 Ford coupe, and being admonished for driving it too fast; a series of flights alone across Canada from Toronto to Fort Nelson, British Columbia at age 19, and an 18-hour drive alone, the next summer, from Falconbridge, Ontario to Greenwich, CT. And, not yet 21, meeting the young lady who became my wife, introduced by my sister in a New Hampshire ski lodge. 

 

In his posthumously published poem, “Auguries of Innocence,” William Blake wrote: “To see a world in a grain of sand,/ And a Heaven in a wild flower,/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,/ And Eternity in an hour.” But to me the concept of infinity and the passage of time through eternity is incomprehensible. Yet, I detect an answer, in the uncountable ancestors who came before and in the unknowable descendants who will follow. It is in the understanding that we could never be born other than the time and place we were. And it is in knowing that it was Caroline and my union that determined all those who follow us.

 

It is when I look back on the sweet memories of our married life, and ahead to the yet unknown lives of our children, grandchildren, and their children (yet to be born) that I best understand the passage of time.

"The Many Shades of Green"

This is being sent early, which I hope does not disturb the rhythm of receiving my essays, but I am busy over the next couple of days, and I thought this ready to go.

This is a short essay, but one with a long gestation. I began marveling at the varieties of green trees, plants and grasses, and the way in which the sun and clouds enhanced and shaped their color over thirty years ago, as I sculled the marsh creeks, rivers and ponds in front of our home in Old Lyme. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed (and still enjoy) the marvels of nature. The photo was taken here at Essex Meadows.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The Many Shades of Green”

September 10, 2025

 

“When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,

And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;

When the air does laugh with our merry wit,

And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;”

                                                                                                                “Laughing Song,” 1789

                                                                                                                William Blake (1757-1827)

 

When hearing the word “green” some think of money or Ireland, others of emeralds or envy, still others the village square or a place to practice putts; a few think of Deerfield or Dartmouth football. But to me the word suggests nature’s most common color and the (almost) infinite variety in which it appears. In his poem “The Scarf and the Flower,” the 17^th Century Spanish poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca wrote: “Green is the colour God doth fling...”

 

I asked ChatGPT: In how many shades does the color green appear? Its answer: “The human eye can distinguish about 100 different hues of green, but when you account for variations in brightness and saturation, people can see up to a million distinct shades of green.” I admit to not understanding the distinction between what “the human eye can distinguish” and what “people can see,” but who am I to question AI? I simply enjoy the variety.

 

On my first trip to London I flew over Ireland, trying to remember the lines from the 18^thCentury Irish poet, William Drennan: “God bless’d the green island and saw it was good...” And watching England’s green fields float below the plane’s windows brought a sense of home coming. For many years I sculled up the Lieutenant River, returning by way of Duck Pond and Duck River. Facing backward as I rowed home, I could see the steeple of Old Lyme’s Congregational Church, but what struck me was the wall of green I faced – deciduous and ever-green trees, holly, dogwood and azalea bushes that lined the river, and marsh grasses, all lit or clouded by the sky, all in myriad hues of green. As I dipped my oars before pulling back, I marveled at all I could see.

 

Now living at Essex Meadows, able to roam the hundred acres that surround us, I walk through fields and woods, absorbing the same miracle – the lawns and the residents’ garden, the bending birch trees in the field beyond, ever-greens tall against the blue sky, and high bushes providing food for deer. While climate change represents a challenge for humans, one aspect, according to a recently released, peer-reviewed report from the Energy Department: “Elevated carbon-dioxide levels enhance plant growth, contributing to global greening...” I’ll take that as a positive.

 

At the intersection, red tells us to stop, yellow to proceed with caution, but green tells us to go. Onward!