Kalyani Tupkary

For all time’s inherent malleability, people want it to be consistent, and more importantly, they want it to be theirs.

Put another way, who stands outside for hours, gazing at a starflower instead of a Samsung Galaxy? When you’re stalking a hawkweed at daybreak, time is an afterthought.

The timeline seems among the most inescapable metaphors we have. And yet, in its modern form, with a single axis and a regular, measured distribution of dates, it is a relatively recent invention. Understood in this strict sense, the timeline is not even 250 years old. How this could be possible, what alternatives existed before, and what