Cause that's the way the world turns. Circles and circles and circles inside circles. Doot don't make me feel old. Don't make me feel young neither, sitting there with children when I remember him in diapers.
Past is present and present past.
Events spread years apart in chronological time become simultaneous and overlapping in the impact of psychological time. But the term psychological time isn't adequate to encompass Wideman's vision because the overlay of events is not just limited to the consciousness of a specific individual but rather to a communal group of individuals. Instead ob being one person's story, the novel is that of several whose lives are inseparable. They do not have independent existences because they are so inextricably intertwined. The present would not have the shape it does if those men had not existed, and so they are an essential part of the present.