VITAE SUMMA BREVIS SPEM NOS VETAT INCOHARE LONGHAM
(The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long – Horace)
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Ernest Dowson
Diane Ravitch's blog 
wow
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare,The Tempest, IV, i
But I would add to what Willie wrote there, this:
“Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
–Albert Einstein, in a letter to the wife of his recently departed friend, the physicist Michele Angelo Besso
From within, from these vantages that are our moments, we see time’s arrow. From without, there is no such thing. All time simply is. That’s what Albert was saying, and if he is right, and there is good reason to think that he is, then what we do and say is eternal, and that should give us pause. Enjoy, Diane, those moments on the beach over the next few days. Those eternal moments.
Quick, someone seize Diane’s Norton Anthology of English Literature before she posts again!
Just kidding, of course, I think.