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Or better still to quote the opening lines of the same stanza from The Dry Salvages:

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence -
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination -
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. 

CR

From: Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, July 6, 2012 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: Meeting the stranger

"The backward look behind the assurance
 Of recorded history, the backward half-look
 Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror." 

 CR

From: P <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, July 6, 2012 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: Meeting the stranger

The ancient rime of the new mariner.
PM

Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

"restoring / With a new verse the ancient rhyme."

CR

From: P <[log in to unmask]>;
To: <[log in to unmask]>;
Subject: Re: Meeting the stranger
Sent: Fri, Jul 6, 2012 12:22:34 PM

And they are that with which we create the future. Point well taken pm 

Tom Colket <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

P> Art is prophetic; it can even create the future.

The Modernists had an even more startling theory: the present changes the past. 

For example, consider this passage from Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
====================================
". . . the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past's awareness of itself cannot show.
  
Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know."
====================================
-- Tom --

 
> Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2012 01:45:45 -0700
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Meeting the stranger
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> The future is always strange; science is always about the past. Art is prophetic; it can even create the future. One can't get anything more out of date than the big bang. Fiat lux!!!