Saturday Quote, 12/29/07

[T]ime is never present; only we are. We are time wearing space as a mask, and with each breath we become smaller and smaller until finally nothing is left of us.

--Alta Ifland, "Elegy for a Fabulous World"

Some years back, reflecting on the disappearance of grayling from northern Michigan waters, it occurred to me that the trout which displaced them are like shimmering, animate tombstones, marking the spots where grayling once held. Reading Ifland's quote, I wondered if it would be more correct to say that grayling and trout (or simply the trout of different generations)that have lived in a given place are different instants of time that slipped on the same aqueous masks.