Aymara's time metaphor reversed? Yahgan says....

[Phil Young]

A friend on another list made the comment below and I thought it would
be of interest to Funknetters. He gave his permission to forward it.

"In a 1982 book by a medievalist named Paul C. Bauschatz titled The Well and
the Tree:  World and Time in Early Germanic Culture 8th-century Germanic 
concepts of time (and space) are metaphorically represented with 
individuals who face the past with the non-past (the future) behind 
them.  Individuals stand close to and face the entrance to an unimaginably 
large container.  Inside this container are stored all the past 
events.  Events flow around the individuals.  Some fall outside the 
container and disappear; others are momentarily becoming part of the 
structure within the container.  There is no outside force that pushes 
events into the container; instead events are pulled in from a force 
within.  And eventually individuals themselves are pulled in at the moment 
of death.  Interestingly the past is the only component with 
structure.  What we witness is always chaos. This situation presents 
difficulties for human beings as they attempt to understand their position 
in the scheme of things.  They stand outside the past and have no direct 
perception of it or of its force.  They can only occasionally glimpse its 
structure since most of it is hidden beyond the entrance.  The pulling 
force does influence events outside the container but in ways usually not 
directly perceptible.  Also, events rush around people as if from 
behind.  Some of these events are insignificant, and as I pointed out, 
disappear; but some are important.  Humans try to sort out these events, 
and the most important factor in sorting them out is the understanding of 
the power of the past as it reaches out and around them to structure 
activities.  Time and space are intimately interwoven. Ancient German time, 
according to Bauschatz, is binary, not tripartite.  It divides into past 
and non-past, not into past, present, and future.  There are no explicit 
references in early Germanic materials to a concept like the future.  He 
points out that future references in Old English are translations of 
explicitly Christian, Latin materials.  The past, as collector of events, 
is clearly the most dominant of the two components of time.  Human beings 
stand at the juncture of this past and the non-past, at the point that 
might be called the present--at least at the point where events are in the 
process of becoming "past." The past, then, is already experienced, 
accomplished, realized--for the most part, unfortunately, by those out of 
contact with living individuals.  The present, to the contrary, is in 
constant flux, confused with both irrelevant and significant details.  What 
we would call the "future" is, within the structure of this Germanic 
system, just more of the non-past, more flux, more confusion, and almost 
entirely unknowable.  It may be somewhat knowable with a thorough knowledge 
of the past and by what criteria the past structures itself, that is, picks 
out events in the flux of the non-past to suck into its container.  Once 
again, individuals face the past, not the "future." Within this binary time 
system the past is constantly increasing and pulling more and more time and 
events into itself.  The past alone has assured strength and 
reality.  Because this time is ever-changing, growing, and space oriented, 
it is dynamic and human oriented.  The tripartite Christian time that we 
have come to accept is static, without space, and outside humanness.
The concept of the container filling up leads to one final conclusion.  The 
container will eventually become full.  At that moment we would expect a 
cosmic close, an end to the universe implicit in the structure itself.  We 
do, indeed, find such a case throughout Germanic mythical literature.
      'Neath sea the land sinketh, the sun dimmeth,
      from the heavens fall the fair bright stars;
      gusheth forth steam and gutting fire,
      to very heaven soareth the hurtling flames.
Not to fear, however, for the myths make clear that it is not the end of 
time but only of one of several temporal stages in the cosmos that mark 
beginnings.
      I see green again with growing things
      the earth arise from out of the sea;
      fell torrents flow, overflies them the eagle.
It is as if the container of the past had overflowed itself and had begun 
to fill another, larger container, which somehow is structured so as to 
surround and enclose the earlier.  The process apparently continues without 
end. Robert."

Cheers,

Phil Young
pyoung at darkwing.uoregon.edu