I don't know, just read it.

{{{{{{{{{{OSSOBUCO}}}}}}}}}}

truth
Though generally delightful, Twyvel sometimes reveals a mean streak. Like just now. :wink:

No meanness intended JLNobody,

Oh where, Oh where is the mean streak?

I was picking up on your post,

This boy is experiencing/expressing time. Describing three particular moments in writing that he experienced as "now."



This is interesting to me. I was once an avid Zen reader, however in the end came away with an incomplete picture. I'm curious if you are touching on what lingers in me as a flaw with Zen like philosophies.

I'm sorry I've been trying to think about how to describe it but its too complex for this format, I would need to write a dissertation in order to do so.

truth
OZ, thanks for your insight. I failed to realize that the boy was, as you say, actually experiencing or expressing time in each utterance:

"The present is now" (said at time 1);
"Now" (said at later time 2), and
"or even now" (said at still later time 3).

I mistakenly thought he was doing what we usually do: talk ABOUT time in the ABSTRACT. He was actually SHOWING us (pointing to) time, in a very CONCRETE (and zen) modality.

yeah
It's called pety existentialism.

truth
But when we actually look at the movement of time, all we see is process or "becoming", not points of "being." It been said by many thinkers that humans cannot think, or communicate, in terms of process or "becoming." We simply have to freeze the process, stop the flow of verbs, as it were, and refer to fixed nouns, like NOW. As soon as our young poet points to a "now" in the flow of time, he is pointing to a fiction, a construction designed to stop the flow, to create points in time. Such points exist not in time but in our minds. Yada, yada.
TUITW, I don't recognize the existentialism in the poem or in our interpretive efforts. By "pety" are you referring to "petite" existentialism or "petty" existentialism?