the difference between poets and mystics . . . The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, … - Neal Stephenson

The cosmos seems oblivious to time. It only matters to us. Consciousness is time-constituting. We build time up out of instantaneous impressions that flow in through our sensory organs at each moment. Then they recede into the past. What is this thing we call the past? It is a system of records encoded in our nerve tissue — records that tell a consistent story.

An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

“Where on earth are you going?” Zula asked, looking about for him. But she had lost him in the radiant fog.
His voice was clear, though. It was the only sound in the world.
“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. “But I’m done here. I did what I was sent to do.”
The golden light grew until it was all she could see, and his voice was heard no more.