its violent beginnings....

Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. Oil painting. 1931

Those melting clocks. They're among the most over-exposed or well-known images of the twentieth century. And still they speak.

Time distorts. Time oozes. Time drips and falls away. Time refuses to hold its shape; refuses to be contained. Time refuses to move in a perfect circle; denies its own orbit, its ties to the sun.

Dalí was only 27 when he created The Persistence of Memory. To me, that seems awfully young to be so... aware. To know time as anything but a roller coaster ride. But even that has its distortions I guess.

Salvador Dalí. Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion. Oil painting. 1954.

His later painting, Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion, was completed at age 50. To me, that seems more true. That fiftieth birthday comes in with bells ringing. Time takes on a new urgency. Time loses meaning. Time melts, twists, fractures, detonates.

Time revisits its violent beginnings.