In this world, time is like a flow of water, occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a passing breeze.� Now and then, some cosmic disturbance will cause a rivulet of time to turn away from the mainstream, to make connection backstream.� When this happens, birds, soil, people caught in the branching tributary find themselves suddenly carried to the past

 

 

Some few people are born without any sense of time.� As consequence, their sense of place becomes heightened to excruciating degree.� They lie in tall grass and are questioned by poets and painters from all over the world.� These time-deaf are beseeched to describe the precise placement of trees in the spring, the shape of snow on the Alps, the angle of sun on a church, the position of rivers, the location of moss, the pattern of birds in a flock.� Yet the time-deaf are unable to speak what they know.� For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.

 

 

 

Alan Lightman

Einstein�s Dreams

1993