Research

A word you find once in a while — it seems to be falling in popularity — is recherché. If you want to point out that something is rare, refined, and sought out with great care, while simultaneously implying that you yourself are refined and elegant (and quite possibly a bit pretentious), you’d describe the thing as recherché.

Recherché is French, which I guess is fairly obvious. In modern American English, putting an accent over a vowel is generally taken to mean ‘hey dude, this might be French.’ In French it simply means “researched”.

The word has been used to great effect in literature, where it’s been used by writers from Mark Twain (in Innocents Abroad, for example) to G.K. Chesterton to Bill Nye. So go do some research; recherché is quite recherché

Memor, and time. Oh, and memory, did I forget that?

Time is not what we think it is. What we perceive it to be. Time seems to pass steadily, in just one direction. We regulate our lives with time; our perceptions are full of what seem to be regular, reliable cycles and markers. The sun rises and sets. Our hearts beat. Living creatures, ourselves included, are born, grow older, and eventually die.

There are hints, here and there, that things are not quite so simple. The older you get, the faster time seems to pass. When you’re five, waiting for your sixth birthday seems to take forever, but when you’re fifty-nine, the wait for your sixtieth doesn’t feel very long at all. And while we only remember things in the past, not the future, most people have experienced a few episodes of deja vu, which almost feels like you’re remembering something from the future.

The way we communicate now, by phone and text and email, is all perceptually instantaneous. That makes it seem like time is pretty universal — although your friend halfway across the world sees the sun or moon at a different spot in the sky, it’s still “now” at the same time for both of you. Or so it feels. Traveling is fast now too. When you end a journey thousands of miles away on the same day you started, it’s easy to visualize both locations; the trip’s start and its end, at the same moment.

The same kind of “stuff” — technology — that we rely on to reinforce our implicit sense of time is what enables us to know for a fact that our experience of time is not the whole story. Travel fast enough and time slows down for you, relative to somebody traveling more slowly. Einstein predicted this, and experiments have demonstrated that it really works that way. Even a trip in an airplane affects the time you experience. You just need a very, very precise instrument to measure it (or, really, two instruments; one on the plane and one not).

I wonder if the human sense of time was different back in the days when a long trip lasted months or years, simply because ships, horses, and feet were slow.  Did it seem like the now you experienced after weeks at sea was the same moment your friends at home lived in?

John Donne, the English poet, wrote A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning in 1611 (or so) and talked about a connection between two widely-separated lovers being like the two legs of a compass (the kind you use to draw a circle, not the north-pointing kind). That image carries a powerful sense of sameness or connection across space and time. When you move a compass, the whole thing moves as one; you don’t think of the two legs being in different moments of time.

Maybe they are, though. Picture the same compass, the same conceit discussing a distant connection — but now the connection is between you as you are today and your younger self. That’s one of the ways we perceive time — there’s not really that much similarity between a person at ten years old and “the same” person at fifty, but that fifty-year-old remembers being ten. There’s an internal continuity between your former selves and the current you. That helps convince us of our perception that time is something like the flow of water.

Henry David Thoreau, the American transcendentalist writer, included in his book Walden this passage: Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.” He’s talking about time as flowing water, but also as something else — the “sandy bottom.” A solid surface.

What if time is a kind of solid? A solid that lies outside our experience and is both fixed and maybe in some kind of motion as well. Everything that, to us, has happened and is yet to happen would all exist in this one state. Alan Moore creates a place like that in his novel Jerusalem (which does not take place in Jerusalem). It’s called “upstairs” and Michael Warren arrives there when, at age 3 or so, he chokes on a throat drop and dies. It’s vast — maybe infinite — but he can look down into what he perceives as rooms. “Those frilly dragon statues down there in the instant’s diamond varnish were his mum and gran and sister.” Minor spoiler: the whole episode turns out to something of a cosmic mistake, and Michael is sent back downstairs, but he — and the readers — are left with the memory of the place and the experience.

Memory is probably the key to our perception of time. I can remember yesterday, and five minutes ago, and years ago. At least I think I can. Because I’ve internalized the idea of “computers,” the great metaphor of our age, my default idea of memory is a separate part of my mind where “stuff is stored.” But I wonder if that’s a useful way to think about it. Sometimes I think that memory is just part of my condition in life at any given time — that is, the things I “remember,” however that works or doesn’t, are just part of the totality. If I remembered something different, I’d be a different person, not the same person that remembers something else.

Stuff happens. That seems pretty certain. A thing that happens changes something else, and sometimes that something else is me.

Tales from the Forest

Raccoon and Hare had good seats for the race. Otter and Muskrat were right in front of them, and Beaver had come over after checking the race course he’d built.

“How did you build all the streams and ponds, Beaver?” asked Raccoon.

“Oh, it’s just the usual sort of thing I do,” said Beaver, “there was already a little brook running though that field, so I just added a little dam here, a levee there, and then let the water do the rest.”

“It’s pretty impressive,” said Hare. “I wouldn’t know how to start to build something like that.”

“It’s civil engineering, that’s what it is,” said Dog, who was a few seats away. “I can dig a pretty good hole now and then — nothing like yours, Mole, of course — but this is a Major Construction Project, Beaver.”

“Oh, it’s not that big a deal,” said Beaver. He felt a little embarrassed at the attention. “It’s just the sort of thing we beavers do, you know.”

“It’s way better,” said Dog. “When you built your pond — you know, the one around your house — that was just one simple dam. The water just came down the stream and stayed there. But in this race course, look what happens. The water comes in over there, makes a little pond, then it splits in two until it gets to that part, where it widens out…”

“That’s so Jake and Oliver can jump over it or splash through it, whichever they want,” said Beaver proudly.

“Then it makes a few twists and turns…”

“That part was pretty tricky,” said Beaver, “water usually wants to go straight, you know.”

“Then some of it trickles into those mud patches…”

“Those are my favorite,” said Otter.

“And fills up that other pond…”

“That one is there for hydrological balance,” said Beaver. “It regulates the flow so the little waterfall always looks just right.”

“Right, and then the waterfall. It’s brilliant, Beaver!”

Beaver shuffled his feet. He was saved when Masie mooed an announcement: “Attention everybody! The race is about to begin!”

“Oh good,” said Beaver, finding a seat next to Dog. “Let’s watch the race instead of looking at the race course.”

Jake and Oliver walked up to the start line. It was just a line drawn in the dirt, but there was a sign next to it that read “Start”.

“The rules of this race,” said Masie, “are…um…well Jake, Oliver, do you know the rules?”

Jake looked at Oliver. Oliver looked at Jake. They both shrugged.

“Look at that,” said Hare to Raccoon, “did you know horses could shrug?”

“I guess we do,” said Jake. “No riding the bus, right?”

“Uh…right,” said Masie. “Okay, are you ready?”

“Sure,” said Jake.

“Guess so,” said Oliver.

“In that case,” said Masie, “On your mark! Get set! Moooooo!”

“Isn’t the last word supposed to be ‘go’?” whispered Raccoon.

“Maybe not if you’re a cow,” whispered Hare back. “But look at Jake and Oliver. What’s going on?”

Everybody had expected Jake and Oliver to start galloping around the race course. But they were just walking at their usual slow, relaxed pace. They strolled up to the first stream that crossed the course, and carefully stepped over it. Jake stopped to take a drink. Oliver politely waited for him.

“This is a strange sort of race,” said Dog. “I thought races meant going as fast as you can.”

Oliver overheard Dog and called out. “This race,” he said, “means going as fast as we want.”

“So it’s a slow race then?” said Dog. “Who wins?”

“We’ll figure that out later,” said Jake, who had water dripping from his chin. “Since we’re horses, we like races…”

“But since we’re us,” finished Oliver, “we don’t really like all that running and panting and sweating. We’d rather have a nice stroll through this lovely landscape Beaver built for us.”

“Beaver,” said Squirrel, who liked it better when things happened the way she expected, “what do you think about this? After all the work you did to build this race course!”

Beaver was smiling. “I like it,” he said. “To be honest, I was a little worried that lots of galloping and splashing around would ruin some of the subtle details of my landscaping.”

“Humph,” said Squirrel.

Jake and Oliver continued their stroll.

“Hey Beaver,” said Otter, “since this race is going to take a long time, is it okay if Muskrat and I go play in the mud?”

“Sure it is,” said Beaver, “but if you go over that little rise, Otter, you’ll find a little surprise I built. You can’t see it from here.”

“A surprise?” said Muskrat. “Let’s go!” Muskrat and Otter ran to the other side of the field where a slight rise dropped away. They disappeared behind the little hill, and everyone heard whoops of delight. Otter and Muskrat reappeared on top of the rise. “Beaver built a mudslide!” they yelled. “A really good one!” Then they disappeared again to go sliding.

Jake and Oliver had gotten as far as the biggest pond. There was a patch of alfalfa beside it, and they took a break to have a snack.

“You know,” said Hare to nobody in particular, “I think the best thing to do in a race like this is to go try it ourselves. Come on, everybody.” With that, nearly everyone got up for a stroll around the race course. Squirrel stayed where she was.

“Humph,” said Squirrel again. “I brought my own acorns, thank you very much. I shall applaud whoever wins this race. If anyone does, that is.”

“Oh for goodness sake,” said Hare, “come with us, Squirrel. Here, see if this satisfies you.” Hare suddenly took off like a shot, running as fast as he could around the course. In a flash, he’d gone all the way around and passed the finish line. It was just a line drawn in the dirt, but there was a sign next to it that said “Finish.” Hortense was standing next to it. “The winner!” she mooed. She handed Hare a flower.

“What’s this?” asked Hare.

“It’s the prize for winning,” said Hortense. “You won the race, Hare.”

Squirrel clapped. “Hooray for Hare!” she called.

“Now will you come with us?” asked Hare.

“Because somebody won the race, yes I shall,” said Squirrel.

“Good,” said Hare. He handed his flower to Squirrel. “Let’s go check out this excellent race course.” From behind the small hill they heard Otter and Muskrat whooping as they played on the mudslide.

Recommendations

Remembrance of Things Past (A La Recherché du Temps Perdu)

From Another Time and Place

“Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them.”

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

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