These three essays were written about a dozen years apart, from the mid-’80s to 2017. I’ve been intrigued by the subject and so have returned to try again. I think that it is with time–that is, our consciousness of this so-elusive object–that we first enter into a symbolic field or dimension. Our lives thus begin an estrangement that grows and grows. Time and alienation are two words that are the measure of each other. Time becomes a thing, standing pitilessly over us. Taken together maybe these pieces are strands toward solving the puzzle of time. In my view the topic is best understood historically (and pre-historically) so as to ground and be able to chart its course. Once we lived without time. Now it’s all too real. But it was never a natural or inevitable development. A harbinger of symbolic culture…and look what that’s brought us.