It is not we who are dying from the moment of birth, but time, from the moment of its birth.. in the sense of a dramatic narrative with its unity of action. The whole, relentless plot moving forward to its inevitable conclusion. (Inevitable is the one chosen from among unlimited possibilities.) But also each individual moment drama leading into a subsequent moment drama, a unique encapsulated pastpresentfuture. Fragmentary time; as fragmentary as these sentences, each dying off in its own abbreviated
And objective time is, thus, not, as we once thought, the horizontal index vector, its origin unknown and somewhere to the left, that moves rightward through a space. It is instead a mirror image of the subjective time vector, which Zettl calls vertical, but in truth runs concurrently with objective time along the horizon and then drops and rises as our engagement varies, felt time diverging from clock time. The object of its drive? Zero time-- that point at which objective and subjective times intersect. Zero time on the objective vector, however, means death. The moment at which nothing changes, all time stops.
Death time encompasses that vector of felt time and its concatenated partner in which time drops off as it dies. The arrow falls off vertically as objective time dies, never to reach its destination along the distant horizon of the right. A destination of no destination, since time is not a bounded line segment of two points. As the arrow falls off, a possible direction is shot out along each point in the curve toward ever diminishing possibilities that have already been pruned from the sphere of light of all possible future moment dramas. Each moment dying off until the end of time. Of that time. That particular time moment. And on along the pulse.
Each moment drama dies off through denouement only to be the catalyst for the next moment drama. That next may be a moment whose drama may be that it is the last. And so the whole plot dies. But, it too, is the catalyst for the next plot. That next plot may be a plot whose drama may be that it is the last. And so the whole story dies. But, it too, is the catalyst for the next story. That next story may be a story whose drama may be that it is the last. And so we exist. Our livesanddeaths fluctuating with the aesthetic pulse of time, inextricable from its formmessages in a hierology of destiny. (Destiny is the one chosen from among unlimited possibilities.) A book of metaesthysics. The book of the dead. A book, because the message is dead and so, too, must be the medium.
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This is an adaptation of the concept of rebirth, as understood by David Loy in his demythologizing of Buddhism for contemporary Westerners. Loy argues that rebirth is not solely about the conventional understanding of reincarnation after our bodily deaths. Instead, even in life, we are reborn every moment-- physically as some cells die and are shed while others grow, but also mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
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