![]() ![]() We could call Homo Irrealis a travel book if the cities he dwelled on-Paris, Rome, Alexandria, St. ![]() This gray wistfulness hovers all over the book. He is, in fact, reaching for moments that could have been, should have been, might have been, but have never actually been. ![]() We know this because every page quivers with a yearning for moments that have long ceased to be. The answer comes straight away and lingers throughout the book: “You temporize, you defer, you anticipate, you remember.”Īciman, for his part, lives in the past. “What do you do when you’re not inhabiting the present?” André Aciman asks in Homo Irrealis, his latest collection of essays, setting the meditative tone of the book and presenting a spirited manifesto on a theme as old as time itself. Our minds become hodgepodge newsfeeds of unmet passions and misspent lives scrolling past us without algorithmic logic or design. We set ourselves up on a path of mindfulness but find ourselves distracted instead. But, it is this shifting moment we are told to seize again and again if we want to taste an elusive slice of calm, or-who knows-even happiness. It is just the point at which the past turns instantly into the future. Outside of the human realm, the present holds no meaning in the greater universe. ![]() This is not an emotional distortion of physical time. As I write these words, I am aware that the thoughts I am on the verge of forming are rolling into the past even before I can convey them. ![]()
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