‘Art Of Holding Infinity In The Palms Of Your Hands’ (37.)

‘’There are worlds within worlds and times hidden within time vastly connected by the flowing matter under constant change and consistent  transition.’’
Saurabh Narang, Indian visual artist

The night before Christmas I had the most incredible, fascinating and vivid dream.  A kind of dream that feels like a long, fascinating  journey to a place you never even hoped to visit.

(c) Saurabh Narang, ‘Anyone Anywhere’, 2009

When the brightness and freshness of the morning sky resolutely entered my bedroom, making sure I won’t  miss the chance to see the little sparks of the unusual radiating the warm energy and positive vibrations into all thats usual, I knew that it is going to be quite an effort to drag myself out of bed.

There was still so much to be done before the Christmas Eve, yet I could not stop myself from leaving  the warm pillows, enjoying the magical vision of all that I have just dreamed of.

While still in bed I begun to reconstruct scenes and dialogues that have witnessed during in my sleep. Actually I  felt like I was a part of a magnificient visual a sonata made up of several chapters by the inscrutable composer called imagination.

(c) Dino Valls ‘Mutus Liber’ 1996

What I always loved about dreams was the fact that they begin to speak up, tell us important stories about ourselves when the concious mind switches off making  room for all that is unconcious and  enigmatic . There are several established theories that help explain the evanescence of dreams and I am sure you have experienced at least few cases during your lifetime when you could recall your dream and knew exactly what was it about.  I am sure that phenomenon of a remembered dream made you feel stunned and amazed as the unique experience has allowed you to unveil something fundamental about your life, your past or your future, about your hidden desires that the most stubborn part of us, the ego, the rational mind have succesfuly rejected.

(c) Saurabh Narang, Fire 3.

We usually tend to remember our dreams after going trough an intense experience, the night after visiting a spectacular place or seeing a movie  that impressed us a lot, or – just like in my case – after reading a book that explained something that I have never really managed to fully unveil.

(c) Saurabh Narang, ‘Sometime, Somehwere. Its Quarter’. 2009

The book that my dreams decided to use as a sort ‘movie script’, was the same book  I have recently received via post from the talented Dutch author and visual artist , Ad van den Boom (*1959),right before my short trip to Lisbone, Portugal.

What I found most surprising and intriguing about that moving and rehumanizing book it was its main character, the director of the company named Karel de Kroon. His occupation and mysterious way of becoming a billionaire was closely related to trading time.  The idea of being able to get more time in return for money attracted many wealthy people from all over the world who were literally begging the accountants of to send them another  six or seven zeros bill . According to van den Boom’s work, to the loyal customers of ‘time factory’ belonged people who have lost their precious time on cheating their wifes or neglecting their family, people who wasted their talents and never followed their drams out of fear for failure and disappointment. In the book also appears a terminally ill person who hopes for his life to be saved.

(c) Dino Valls, ‘Passio’, 1993

There was one thing that all of the miserable people had one thing in common. They wanted to get access to more time.  It was no surprise me for a second that the well-educated, smart and seemingly rational businessmen  paid millions for couple of extra days and months they hoped to use once the money reaches the traders account. All they wanted to belive in was that time is money and that money in fact, can buy people more time.

As you can already persume, I found reading the book written by Ad very enriching and enlightening. What I did not know, however, was that soon, in my dreams I was going to meet the books main  character.

(c) Anna H. Lucy ‘Handelaar In Tijd’, Lisbone 2018

It also stroke me, that all that the time time trader was trying to explain to me during my dream, was also a hidden message incripted in the artworks by the Indian viaual artist and my friend Saurabh Narang (*1975) and the Zaragoza born, self-thought, Spanish painter (*1959) Dino Valls.

Since it is only few hours left till the Christmas Eve begins, let me share with you the awe-inspiring words that time trader told me in my dream. Even though my eyes were closed my mind was wide open like never before :

„Time is like a highly inteligent, wild animal living in harmony, freely and happily in its natural enviroment. It does not accept bribes, it does not compromise its independence, it cannot be drugged, seduced or hypnotised.

Enraged time knows no mercy. Anyone who, while facing a major set-back in life, has ever blamed or forsaken time, should not be surprised to feel its sharp teeth approaching his or her throat.

This will happen, not because time choses to act  as our enemy, but because just like any wild animal – it expects us to respect its territory which is and should always remain beyond human power and control.

(c) Dino Valls, ‘Lessons of Darkness’ 1993

If we decide to act in a conceited way, time that is all-mighty and invincable, will start to use an infalliable mechanism, a strong survival instinct, to act against anyone who is sabotaging its undisturbed existance.

The reaction of time against human kind is never an act of terror – but an act of self-defence, a response to an agressive, ungreatful or violent behaviour. Whoever has ever ignored the power of time, has sooner or later regreted it, as no matter where we are, time can sense our sin, our deceit, our fear, our fast pulse and the rising adrenaline.

 

(c) Dino Valls, ‘Antiphone’ 1993

If we don’t squander time, spending it  thoughtlessly on trivial,silly and unimportant things, if we learn how to treat it  wisely and kindly, if we master this difficult craft known to very few enlightened souls, regardless of our age and the numer of days we still have got left on this earth, it will work in our favour. It will allow us to get access to the divine power and energy which is locked at the bottom of every huaman unconcious mind.

But there are two conditions to it. One involves ‘passion and love’ which should always be the tip of our moral compass and on top of all other driving forces at any action in life. Second is establishing connection to the purpose of one’s life. That essential awareness, once once attained, becomes the ultimate guide trough all that is going to happen in the future.People who are persistant enough, strong enough and curious enough to discover that purpose, begin to treat  time with love and care, as an exquisite and beautiful jewel, a marvelous reward that can bring them closer to what they have always dreamed of.

(c) Saurabh Narang, Fire 3

For that kind of people, time appears as an opportunity, not really a punishment or burden which is the perception of time by people ignorant to the knowledge and the chances that life is throwing at us from time to time. This is contrary to the ones who are continously at war with the passing time and that way have chosen to become victims of their own life. What they do not know is that whoever is at war with time, is in fact at war with life.

The worriors, people who  have found, accepted and acted upon their  true calling always feel as if  time was always on their side. They don’t chase it. They flow with it.

Next time you will hear yourself saying ‘I have no time’– think twice and ask yourself if what you just said actually ymakes any sense.

Wouldn’t it be much better to say – what is being expected from me at this moment, does not serve my purpose, it  does not transform me, it does not make me fall in love with life, it does not change my  darkness into light.

Since time is the most valuable and powerful perrogative in life, people should cherish it and refuse to offer it to the things, people and situations that do not nurture their spirit and the ultimate goal of their lives.”

Time is what happens between between breathe in and breath out. Time is what lives between a new situation and our  reaction to it.  When we think there is no hope left for us, time smiles at us  as the sun begins to peak over the edge of the earth, like a friend trying to comfort us.

.. essentially, humans are alive for the purpose of journey, a kind of three-act structure. (…)He didn’t know what the point of the journey was, but he did believe we were designed to search for and find something. And he wondered out loud if the point wasn’t the search but the transformation the search creates. …[I wondered] that we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us. The point of a story is the character arc, the change.” 
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life