Time

The Gentle Anarchist: 1. December 20th 2025

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation

What might have been and what has been Point to one end which is always present.

-T S Eliot, The Four Quartets

Is it possible for, say, an ageing bookseller to be anarchic in the morning?

There is something about the last few moments of sleep and the process of waking which seems somehow at odds with the revolutionary spirit - even in its gentlest form. This is when sleep seems to be at its deepest and sweetest; worth holding on to if you can. As we start to come to, perhaps propped up in bed with a tea or coffee, we might enjoy a brief respite from the failings, excesses, inadequacies, embarrassments, distractions and frustrations of the day before and, for a few minutes at least, be able to relax in the present moment, as yet untroubled by the alarms and diversions promised by the day ahead.

More often than not the gap, between being pleasantly asleep and properly awake, may be brief, measured only in minutes. Yet even the darkest and most troubled soul (often the people we least expect) can sometimes find time for reflection and a rare sense of calm between the body’s first stirrings and having to get up and start the day. No matter how fleeting, it is a time when peace and love seem to be at least a possibility - until the news comes on (if we let it) and our blood pressure starts to rise again.

However, even at the start of the day there are issues to be considered and addressed by the quietly dedicated anarchist. The first is the question that troubles us all ... why do we have to get up in the first place? The answer of course is multifaceted and, like many of the issues which we will consider in the months ahead, has influences which are both primitive, going back to our very evolution, and modern, driven by the moment. To start with the roots of the thing, nature has long recommended that we rise at dawn when the morning light marks the beginning of the day and the start of hunting, both our own and that of any predators.

Fundamentally we wake up in order to eat and to avoid being eaten. This is true even in a sleepy quarter like the rare book trade.

Starting the day

It is often said that we are at our peak, both mentally and physically, first thing in the morning. Hard to believe I know; like being told that marihuana is a performance enhancing drug. The way it works, so the argument goes, is that the survivors of yesterday’s battle with life’s various challenges, are rewarded after a solid eight hours of repose with tissues restored, limbs rested and the supply of hormones renewed. The purists, rather spoiling the argument by taking it too far, even suggest that our morning ablutions are part of nature’s plan to ensure that we start the day with systems cleared, lean and ready for the trials ahead. If you ever have to choose between fight or flight this is the best time to do so.

Today, of course, the trials we face are most commonly man-made; nature and God replaced by more human challengers. William Burroughs described a unitary figure of schizophrenic authority, Mr Bradley Mr Martin, who might be a useful model here, no crazier conceptually than many of our real-life Gods and leaders. However, as the global pandemic showed all too clearly, the continuing potency of nature - or God if you prefer - should never be written off. A theme to which we will no doubt return.

And so it is that most of us now get up, get dressed and prepare ourselves for paid employment or some other form of work. Of course, there are still plenty of places and vocations in the world, where each and every day really is a battle for survival with nature; bitingly cold metal insect landscapes, shimmering un-relenting heat, hunger, disease and dust and the raging of the elements, increasingly provoked by ever more extreme weather conditions. However, for a large part of the world, nature and the wild seemed to be containable problems and the greatest enemy was people or perhaps just “other people”.

L’Enfer, c’est les autres.

- Jean Paul Sartre

Sartre may have been referring to the Nazis occupying Paris but his quip has become a near universal description of how many of us view the rest of humanity. Our remoteness from the natural world poses one of the major obstacles faced by those trying to warn us of these fundamental changes taking place. It is why humans - unlike much of the local wildlife - failed to take evasive action as the major tsunamis of the last few decades approached landfall in Sri Lanka and Japan. Unlike the birds, which fly off before the volcano erupts, we have lost much of our sensitivity to nature, and too often miss the warning signals it sends out.

Instead, even in what we choose to call a civilised society - an expression we will no doubt return to - the battle is now most frequently with our fellow humans. It will likely be disguised by any number of well-established control mechanisms such as brute force, the rule of law, religion, politics, class, family values and social mores and may be moderated by safety valves such as consumerism, the media and sport but it is still a battle for survival.

We might not realise it or rationalise it in this way, but this is why we get up in the morning; to engage in a form of more or less virtual combat so that we might not only survive another day but perhaps live a little as well. Even the gentlest of us struggle not to be tempted by the traditional spoils of victory; money, sex and power - the usual ménage à trois that we are constantly being told by politicians, advertisers and employers we are in danger of missing out on.

For many of us this no doubt seems a rather extreme depiction of daily life, far removed from a relatively harmless cycle of work, a little bit of relaxation with family and friends and the prospect of an occasional bit of excitement; a new car, a fortnight’s holiday or a new series on television. The biggest battle many of us face today is not with survival but with boredom. The Reverend Robert Shields of Dayton, Ohio recorded in meticulous detail whatever he had done every hour of every day often in five-minute segments for over twenty five years, no matter how trivial or mundane - that is how life now feels for many of us as we endlessly check our phones for messages or news. The Reverend Robert Shields might be an extreme example but there are plenty of lawyers and others who charge their time not just by the hour but in ten, six or even five-minute segments and have to dutifully record their daily activities in much the same way. Fortunately, this doesn’t apply in the book trade but there are still daily chores that measure out our day – and not just coffee spoons.

For many it is the distance between the reality of our daily lives and the natural world around us which is seen as the measure of civilisation and the forces which control it. Much of what we work for (or are persuaded we need to work for) appears to be to keep nature at bay. That in itself should not be an issue - we all want to wake up somewhere warm and comfortable not having to worry about where our next meal will come from. When we describe getting up to face the day as part of a fight for survival this is not intended to be critical of any particular aspect of society. It is simply that any commentary on society which fails to recognise the underlying power of the forces of nature will rarely arrive at a complete understanding of what really drives us on from one day to the next. Getting up and engaging with life is part of that – even for a bookseller.

To be continued.