In passing

Cyclamen on Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, Rebecca Solnit

Orchid on Numbers in the Dark, Italo Calvino

The hush of the falling flowers in the hour before dawn. You've been gone, way too long. Time has passed. Time passes. Relentlessly. Every gesture plotting its escape. Moments flee rapidly. Time is past. But this is the present.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
–– excerpt from Burnt Norton, by T. S. Eliot (Four Quartets)