writing for self-discovery

What faces you when you’re on the throne? I’m serious, what is literally in the space directly in front of you? What do you gaze upon multiple times daily doing what natural urges require?

In my private chamber, the Vision Board occupies that place. It’s four feet eight inches from my eyeball to the center of that informative piece of art. I measured. My visits provide ample time to peruse its content, mull over its many meanings, stew, and ponder.

Be who you are, Be where you are, compelled my first attempt to share revelations gleaned from the Board in a post, Becoming Small. Satisfied with my conclusions, I moved on to, The Space Between. That phrase was glued beside the image of two very old women smoking cigarettes and wearing vintage wedding gowns. Beneath them were the words, the future, and as old as time.

First I asked myself, The space between what? Staring at me were those two ancient broads. I had the uneasy premonition that I was seeing my future. So the space was the present. The now. The time existing between the past and the future.

But I couldn’t leave that alone. How big is that space, I wondered?

A wise woman once told me that the present is the only time we have in which to create. I would change that to say, the present is the only time we have period. Our minds can dwell on the past. We can imagine the future, but our physical being cannot be in either of those places. We are only in the present.

Who thinks about these things? I should have been born in the era of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato. I’d have fit right in disguised as a man. The female philosophers came later:

• Hypatia of Alexandria: An early female philosopher who worked in astronomy and mathematics
• Heloise of Argenteuil: A French philosopher from around 1100–1164 who advocated for adequate education for nuns
• St. Hildegard of Bingen: Lived from 1098–1179
• Catherine of Siena: Lived from 1347–1380
• Christine de Pizan: Lived from 1364–c. 1430
• Moderata Fonte: Lived from 1555–1592 and was a critic of religion and feminist
• Tullia d’Aragona: Lived from c. 1510–1556 and was known for her intellectual conversations

Who’s heard of any of them? Ok. A subject for another day – sometime in the future!

Back to the questions at hand: How long is the present? Is it measured in conscious time, from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep? For the sake of sanity, I think I’ve always thought of it that way. I plan what I’ll do today. Yesterday’s gone, tomorrow is yet to come, so…

My literal brain wasn’t having it. No, Sherry. Think. The present is the most infinitesimally small unit of measurable time, a zeptosecond, one trillionth of a billionth of a second. Like it or not, everything else is past or future.

But… (I argued) I move from one zeptosecond to the next… Explain that! If I’m always in the present then my present isn’t the smallest measure, it’s unlimited, until death I depart. I thought about it for a minute. Both the logical and the imaginative sides of my brain seemed delighted with that explanation.

Whew! Glad that’s settled. What a relief. I’m not bound by the zeptosecond. I have unlimited time to create. That’s good news because I want to write another novel. And I want to live long enough to see the one I already wrote, Nettle Creek, picked up by a publisher. Hopefully, there’ll be enough space between for all that and so much more.