【原文】

LOSS OF DIRECTION

If more gently than Orpheus
who moved even the trees
you were to pluck the zither
the life-blood would not return
to the vain shadow
Harsh fate,
but its burden becomes lighter
to bear, since everything
that attempts to turn back
is impossible. (I, 24)

WHERE DOES THE ETERNAL CURRENT COME FROM?

Clocks may well run at different speeds in the mountains and in the plains, but is this really what concerns us, ultimately, about time? In a river, the water flows more slowly near its banks, faster in the middle—but it is still flowing… Is time not also something that always flows—from the past to the future? Let’s leave aside the precise measurement of how much time passes that we wrestled with in the preceding chapter: the numbers by which time is measured. There’s another, more essential aspect to time: its passage, its flow, the eternal current of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies:

The eternal current
Draws all the ages along with it
Through both realms,
Overwhelming them in both.

Past and future are different from each other. Cause precedes effect. Pain comes after a wound, not before it. The glass shatters into a thousand pieces, and the pieces do not re-form into a glass. We cannot change the past; we can have regrets, remorse,

认知跃迁： 这里的秘密在于“尺度”。想象一幅由黑白像素点组成的巨幅画作。你把显微镜贴在屏幕上，只能看到一个个中性的、没有感情的像素点（基础法律）。你退后十米，看到了蒙娜丽莎的微笑。那张微笑不是假的，但它确实只在宏观尺度上才有意义。时间的方向，就是宏观尺度上的“蒙娜丽莎的微笑”。

厘清：区分“时间流逝的速度”与“时间流逝的方向”。上一章讲速率不同（时间在某些地方更慢），这一章讲方向不同（过去与未来之别）。这两者是时间这件旧袍子上最先被撕开的两道口子，但性质完全不同。速率不同是引力场直接造成的，而方向的不同，则与我们接下来要谈的“热”和“熵”紧密相连。不要把它们混为一谈。

你刚刚经历的是罗韦利对时间的第二次、也是更为亲密的一次突袭。现在，你脚下的根基应该更不稳了，但这是好事，因为旧的地板不拆掉，就无法向下挖掘到真理的基石。他答应要带你去一个没有时间的世界，而摧毁时间的方向性，是通往那里的必经隘口。