Stephan Eberhard & Nele Solf – How Does Time Behave on this Planet?

How Does Time Behave on this Planet?

 

I open my eyes. Half in darkness, half in light. Around me, a landscape that has been desertified. No one else seems to live here. The atmosphere is thick. There is sound of thunder that comes down out of the skies at night, that hides in the clouds and growls. There is lightning. And then silence, between waves at the ocean.

Are we on an island?

There is you. There you are. You are lying next to me. Breathing calmly.
We are at home on the flatlands. We long for the solid ground. For everything to exist. We have so much space to share. But now: With us dead birds. The sky isn’t up there; it’s between us. No. It comes from everywhere at once.
All this remains very strange.

You are moving. Actually, you never stay still. Actually, you never stay. Otherwise you’ll smash everything. Like a machine, a cyborg; but also a plant, living, dying.

Often at night, I am familiar, close. I am blood. But when you stir, you disturb the order. Worlds stand or fall. Final versions do not exist.

The world has this in it: The stars up above it. And this: The ice, the mirror. But not that: No exuberance, no turbulence.

We could enter into the nature. That sameness in which we have remained for centuries. Our horizon will never stop expanding. For us the sun does not simply rise or set. It’s like: I open my eyes. Half in darkness, half in light. Around me, a landscape that has been desertified. No one else seems to live here. The atmosphere is thick. There is sound of thunder that comes down out of the skies at night, that hides in the clouds and growls. There is lightning. And then silence, between waves at the ocean.

Are we on an island?

There is you. There you are. You are lying next to me. Breathing calmly.
We are at home on the flatlands. We long for the solid ground. For everything to exist. We have so much space to share. But now: With us dead birds. The sky isn’t up there; it’s between us. No. It comes from everywhere at once.
All this remains very strange.

You are moving. Actually, you never stay still. Actually, you never stay.

Otherwise you’ll smash everything. Like a machine, a cyborg; but also a plant, living, dying.

Often at night, I am familiar, close. I am blood. But when you stir, you disturb the order. Worlds stand or fall. Final versions do not exist.

The world has this in it: The stars up above it. And this: The ice, the mirror. But not that: No exuberance, no turbulence.

We could enter into the nature. That sameness in which we have remained for centuries. Our horizon will never stop expanding. For us the sun does not simply rise or set. It’s like:

No other geography is available. There is room enough, but there is nothing beneath. An interface between the sensible finitude of existential territories and the trans-sensible infinitude of the Universes of reference. No ground subsists. But no abyss, either.

 

– Stephan Eberhard & Nele Solf