What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.

We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood.

Lorsque l'avenir est sans espoir, le présent prend une amertume ignoble

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.

In fact, anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness.

Lorsque l'avenir est sans espoir, le présent prend une amertume ignoble.

Knowledge … is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is the present usually hurts.

But it is just this reality of the present, this moving, vital now which eludes all the definitions and descriptions. Here is the mysterious real world which words and ideas can never pin down. Living always for the future, we are out of touch with this source and center of life, and as a result all the magic of naming and thinking has come to something of a temporary breakdown.

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if were found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay it's too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching. (Page 9)

We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood. It's what makes us men.

The future's uncertain and the end is always near

"(…) There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. (…) What makes the present so different? Obviously, my presence. I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality.