future past

Ooh, love that image of the future as something that is sneaking up on you!

How do people generally picture the future?  I always see it as a dark path
stretching north before me, the days, weeks, and months a snaking lane that
dips into valleys, goes over hills at the New Year, but is there, waiting
for me to walk on it, like the Yellow Brick Road.  Its stones are even
dotted with events that I see dimly.  The Trollish notion of the the future,
however, must be one where they are facing the past, with the future at
their back.  They look behind them, as a child would, peering out of the
rear window of a car and seeing the accumulation of events receding.  This
is actually very commonsensical, since the future is only foreseeable in
one's imagination.  How can I tell that I will really go to the dentist next
Tuesday?  It may be written on the pavement there (which is just a fancy
blown-up image of my calendar), but the Ice Age might have come upon us.  :)

How, then, do I see the past?  It's very strange.  It's to the back of me,
and I have to turn around.  It becomes a fixity, like snapshots.  It becomes
a dream.  There can be no walking back on it.

Are these fairly common images of temporality?  How 'bout the rest of you?

Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/verbs.html
Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."  Gospel of Bast

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 4:33 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Kassi Script


> Quoting Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>:
>
>
> > There was something else about it that made "past"="front" and
> > "future"="back", but it mostly seemed to have to do with the idea that
> > you can *see* (=remember) the past, as if it's in front of you; you
> > *can't* see the future, so it's like something behind you that's
> > sneaking up on you.
>
> This is exactly the "Trollish perception of time" I spoke of - the Trolls
of
> Pratchett's Discworld sees time this way.
>
>                                                      Andreas
>

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