Art of This Moment

Most of us move through the day as if time were a hallway, and we were walking down it. Behind us is what has passed. Ahead is what hasn't happened yet. We stand somewhere in the middle, briefly.

But there's another way of looking at this. What if time isn't the container, and you aren't inside it? What if this moment isn't a point on a line, but the whole thing at once, and you are all of it?

This view can radically alter our ordinary experience. The song-sparrow’s morning chant from a hidden branch. The azure sky on a clear afternoon. The late-night conversation that didn’t go the way you hoped. These aren’t sequential episodes. Each one is the whole world, briefly showing its face. Each one is complete.

In my process, I've found that the work goes awry when I treat it as a path toward a finished piece. But when I return to this moment, to this brushstroke, the image simply becomes what it is.

Here’s something to contemplate: what remains of the past, and what hasn't yet arrived, if this moment is all there is?