Tiptoeing Across the Circle of Time

Now that I am retired, I am more inclined than ever before to think about the exigencies of time, its requirements, its rewards, its motion, and, of course, its limits. My thoughts about this often find their way into my fiction. I am working on a new novel, More More Time, and in this excerpt, the protagonist, a high school history teacher in his sixties, tries to convince his students of the Civil War's relevance by discussing the closeness of all time, past, present, future.

Max began each new school year by drawing a large circle on the board. He would then ask his students to imagine that the circle represented all of time, an infinite amount of time. Then he would draw a line through the middle of the circle, explaining that this was how we experienced time; a straight line running from the past on one side of the circle through the present in the middle and then on to the end of time at the other side of the circle. “Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say this represents the Civil War.” And he would draw a hash mark across the line. “Now, the Civil War seems like ancient history to most of you, doesn’t it?” And his students would yawn and shake their heads, some with quizzical looks. “There were no cars, no computers, no TVs, no airplanes, no texting, no Twitter, no Rock ‘n Roll, no Hip Hop, none of the things that you take for granted today. And Americans were fighting and killing each other on American soil. And there were slaves. And the president was a man who had no formal education to speak of. How could that time have anything to say to us today? It is so far away.” Then he would pause and ask the important question. “Where would you put the present day on this time line?” Invariably someone in the front would point to the other end of the line, far from Max’s hash mark. “Remember,” Max would say, “this line represents all time---all of the past, all of the present, and all of the future.” Students would stare. “Okay, here’s where the line would actually go.” And he would draw another hash mark atop the mark already on the board. “That is how close the long ago is; and that is how close the yet to come is. The molecules of air that we breathe each day are the same molecules they breathed, and will be the same molecules that those who come long after us will breathe. It is all one, connected like the cars of a train are connected. If we act like the cars are not connected, that they are separated by clock time and physical distance, that they are actually moving along independently of each other, then we will lose much and learn little. We all live in the same circle of time.”

Learn about Seaburn's novels by clicking on "more..." under his picture at the top of the page.