Daniel Kehlmann’s novella “Mahlers Zeit” (Mahler’s Time) is about a physicist who discovers a hole in the chaos theory, potentially upsetting the linearity of time and resulting in the coexistence of the past, present and future. The narrative consists of the process Mahler, the physicist, stumbles through to profess his discovery. He’s hindered by flashes from the past, as well as the enormous tension inherent in the anticipation of fundamentally changing human experience. This slow and tortured process poses the question whether Mahler's particular experience of the present, entangled with the past and future, is caused by the fact that he will eventually succeed in professing his discovery. The genius of the narrative lies in the way it maintains the possibility of the alternative, which is that Mahler never does effect his discovery, and his present entanglement with the past and the future simply reflects actual human experience.
Then I thought of Canada, where I hoped to move in old age with a friend in even older age. Yesterday I suggested to him that doing yoga now would help him chop wood in Canada when he's 81. I actually imagined him chopping wood surrounded by snow. Later he remarked that when we're that age nothing will matter anymore anyway. Somehow I understood what he meant, but now I wonder, what exactly won't matter anymore that matters now? And why not?
