Time passes. We get older. Every second, every heartbeat, we’re all getting there, one way or the other. Love, possessions, status, health, wealth—all of it comes and goes in a constant state of flux. The most precious thing that we possess—if we can be said to truly possess it—is time, a commodity of which there is a finite supply. None of us can know how much of it we have and there is no way to obtain any more of it.   I once had a dream. This was many years ago, but it is one of a very small number of dreams that I’ve ever had which I both recalled when I woke and which has remained with me ever since. In my dream I was attending a lecture at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The lecture was by the late Australian writer and critic Robert Hughes. After the lecture I waited for Hughes to emerge from the hall. He had been in a near fatal automobile wreck and was walking with a severe limp, aided by a cane. Hughes and I walked over to a food vendor’s cart outside of the lecture hall and Hughes purchased some crackers spread with cat food (this was a dream, remember). I had some questions that I wanted to ask regarding the lecture.