FUTURE BOUND
Where Does The Past Go?
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Future Bound: a future that will inevitably happen; a future that confines, ties, and secures; a future that leaps from one extraordinary moment to another; a future that is shaped by ethical and legal duties; a future of doubt and certainty.
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My ninety five year old aunt asks me what happens to yesterday?
To be clear, she does not ask what happened to yesterday...
I like to think I know what has come before, and I have some ideas about what may arise tomorrow, but in truth I have no idea where the experience of my now, goes. And yet I think my life, my past, has substance...
I have tools that offer me a glimpse of what time is: my memory, making, and forethought. My moment of life however, the now that I think of myself as alive within, is the past as soon as it comes to mind, and at the very moment I interrogate it. When I think I am experiencing the present, in truth I am processing and recalling what was my now a moment ago. My now is far more ephemeral than I care to admit...
Why is this important to reflect upon?
Now is all I experience with my senses. Time is where all living things act and is the crucible of change. Time is where I love.
Unlocking ideas and understanding about the nature of time not only shapes how I live, but what living is.
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Future Bound
Time
More than now
Ever moving
More than breath
I ride its waves
The ocean of my flow and flex
A secret scent
My present, old
My future bound but for my will to act
That in my bob as cork upon the surface of its sea
I see my stack of time that seems to rise inexorably
Towards a place far flung from here
Beyond my gravity, my exosphere
For time is but the name I call my life
The price of being born
My thinking of a start and end
Time's majesty and mystery
All is more than meets the eye as time becomes my friend
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The artwork shows two people conjoined as one. They lay in a state of calm contentment, their eyes no longer see. They see from within. They sense the world, together. Their difference is disturbing, yet non-threatening.
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Time is immeasurably larger than the earth, but here I am, and so I think of how humans change their journey through time by altering life's DNA. In the past, slowly, often more by accident, and now and increasingly in the near future, by design. DNA defines the period and shape of life's time on earth.
'Future Bound' is my muse about issues that arise from gene therapy. The words Future and Bound open many pathways... What future will unfold? Pick one:
A future that seems inevitable and out of my control. A future bound to happen.
A future that is shaped by ethical and legal considerations. A future bound by rule and law.
A future that embraces weakness and diversity as strength. A future bound to care, and tethered to concensus.
A future that confines and keeps others distant from difference and disability. A future, bound to ideas of what makes the perfect human.
A future that leaps from the development of one extraordinary biomedical enhancement to another, without thoughtful contemplation.
A future of certainty and doubt.
As I gaze at Future Bound I make my choice, for choice is time's release.
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Where does the past go? What happens to yesterday? In part our past is our DNA, the substance of our future...
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An extract from the full size image follows below.
