To achieve escape velocity from Presentism
5/29/2024
I have been an attorney for 43 years today. I was sworn in as an attorney in California on May 29, 1981. I was 25 years old, almost 26. 43 years later, I am 68 years old, almost 69. I got on the treadmill this afternoon at there gym , popped in my ear buds and “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang, 1980, started to play. I began to run the events of the last 43 years through my head. Between the rhythm of my body on the treadmill, the beat and the spirit of the song and my memory parade, my present became fused with the panorama of my past. I had reached solid personal density.
In the book" Breaking Bread with the Dead” by Alan Jacobs, Mr Jacobs describes the theory of a character, Kurt Mondaugen, in the novel “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon. In the novel is a passage in which “Mondaugen’s Law” is described:
“Personal density …is is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth. Temporal Bandwidth is the width of your present, your now…the more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona.
Mr Jacobs goes on to say at page 23 of “Breaking Bread With The Dead” that “presentism, is being “wholly creatures of this particular intersection of space and time." “To achieve escape velocity from presentism.” “You have to step out and away and back and forward, and you have to do it regularly.”
I couldn’t believe what I had read. He caught the feel of this huge book writing, journal experiment and blogging adventure that I have been on now for over three years. Reviewing my 46 years worth of journals has caused me to live both in the present and in the past. It has expanded my being to incorporate and to communicate with the past. It has exploded my presentism. I have said for a long time that it broadens my pallet. Meaning, I now perceive life from the vista and vantage point of spans of time. Not just from the narrow confines of the hurried, worried NOW. A broadened pallet is temporal bandwidth.It is personal density.
