'He had the time of his life', what an odd expression; 'the time of your life', it doesn't mean what it says except that it does, obliquely alluding to the duration of an entire life as if that were the basic unit of time on which the varying experiences were mapped or layed out in a neat ribbon - and see how this one stands out here. This particular measure or numéraire is always in the background offering a sort of convertible reference for valuation, a standardised internal perspective. Not that you know the end of it, but you can guess pretty roughly, the future emerging close-by out of its opaque cloud and the past receding behind, fading into grey shadows with always about the same thickness despite all the memories squeezed into it, and you know it will be just like that at the last moment too. In the faces of passing strangers you fleetingly reinhabit different stages in your past and look forwards and backwards from them. It is strange to see one as if it were still ahead of you but then memory catches up and you see that it is really in your past. You realise the imaginary interlock of forwards and backwards as it can only be known from this moving point, as if that ineluctable motion were finally justified in bring you this ripening knowledge, this foretaste of what.