Photo Story: La durée - Life and temporality

There are two facets of time: the first one is objective, measurable, like the face of a clock, a calendar, even a celestial cycle. The other is a subjective idea. It is the passage of time we experience, personally. Personal time is not only free from the objective clock-work precision. We often experience it in non-linear form, defying the arrow of time. A single moment can seem like an eternity in that temporal space while ages can pass by at lightning speed.

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

The lived time, as Henri Bergson philosophized and explored by the modernist writers, the likes of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, is fundamentally decoupled from the objective, mechanical time. The "lived time" is a bubble of warped space and time where we each experience the arrow of time free from the second law of thermodynamics.

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

The subjective passage of time, like the objective time, is interwoven with the personal experience of space, and the result is an experience of space-time. In this continuum, two entities may have parted an instant ago. Still, with each grain of subjective time, the space between their divergent courses expands exponentially in the minds of the entities experiencing the divergence.

“For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting.” ― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

The passage of time in this continuum, while experienced under the same sun, appears different when experienced in solitude compared to a collective experience. Personal time, faced through isolation or seclusion, is like a boat suspended in a sea. A shared time, with meaningful inter-subjective connect, appears traversable, giving a sense of a journey of becoming rather than being.

Einstein once said “Time is an illusion.” But then, what isn't?

- Images taken in Mandarmani, India on 26th November 2021