the-past

It does not matter how much we distance ourselves, how far we run - the past always shadows us.

We cannot change the past, she thought. How we long to sometimes, trying to work out how horror might have been averted by a fluke of fortune, a kind intercession, wisdom not yet granted.

To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound and more like a poultice.

When the past comes knocking, don't answer. It has nothing new to tell you.

Because of the past, so many people are living in the past! No one is free from the past, but we are free to choose to move from the past into the present or stay in the past, though we live in the present!

History isn't all fact--it's just the story the victors tell to keep themselves in power. And it's been a slow revision. The more time passes, the easier it becomes to reinvent the past.

Who knows what's for true once a time is past? There's no way to prove how something was that's gone. And if a time is gone, what does it matter? It's all rain into rivers now.

It__ not a crime to wish for other worlds. You__l get taxed for it but they can__ throw you in jail for creating your own private world_yet. Dramatics are fun, an indulgence. __ou can__ go backward,_ __ou can__ live in the past,_ they tell you. Why not? __ou__e got to put all that behind you and move on to other things,_ they say. Bullshit! These are all expressions of modern disposability. It__ a mediocritizing technique__rying to get rid of what I call __ast orthodoxies._ It__ our past that makes us unique, therefore it__ our past that economic interests want to rob from us, so they can sell us a new, improved future. Society now depends on a disposable world__ut with the old, in with the new, including relationships. But how we weep and wish we could hold onto those cherished moments forever, to those long-whispered dreams, those tortured nights__ow we want to grasp them and stop them from sifting through our fingers. I say, __on__ let it happen. Keep things the way you want them and let the rest of the world be duped.

The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence

Remembering something from the past? you are creating it right now as evidence for who you are now.

MOTHER TIME: The past is always with us, dear, for better or worse. It is what it is and you can't change it. All you can do is learn how to live with it in the present.

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.

when you shoot for the stars, you can't ever look back.

I am not where I need to be, but, thank God, I am not where I used to be.

It is not good for the spirits to dwell on that which cannot be altered.

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water.

MOTHER TIME: Life goes by so very fast, my dears, and taking the time to reflect, even once a year, slows things down. We zoom past so many seconds, minutes, hours, killing them with the frantic way we live that it's important we take at least this one collective sigh and stop, take stock, and acknowledge our place in time before diving back into the melee. Midnight on New Year's Eve is a unique kind of magic where, just for a moment, the past and the future exist at once in the present. Whether we're aware of it or not, as we countdown together to it, we're sharing the burden of our history and committing to the promise of tomorrow.