[*] A track-script—a narrative constructed from fragments, traces, and movements across time and space.
Where is deeptime? What is deeptime? When is deeptime?
Prehistory. A modern enigma. Paris, Centre Pompidou, Gallery 1, summer 2019. I enter the large overture room of the exhibition. It is dark and empty. I walk, I feel, I search. In a corner, I glimpse a small lit crack—some sort of niche in the wall. Inside it, a pale light and a shard of clay pottery floating in the darkness. The only element in the first room: a ceramic fragment surrounded by vast blackness. In the following rooms, this blackness erupts into an explosion of colors and shapes—a parade of artistic impressions and imaginations of time before history. Pre-history.
The prefix “pre-,” as the Slovenian Fran dictionary tells us, serves at least three functions: to express origins and beginnings (e.g., primordial cell, prehistoric man, ancestral homeland); to indicate a great temporal distance (e.g., ancient, primeval); and to denote a generational remove (e.g., great-grandmother, great-grandson). Much like the word “once,” which in Slovene stretches both into the deep past and forward into the unknown future (once upon a time (nekoč) there lived / one day (nekoč) there will live), the prefix “pre-” wanders across generations, indifferent to the direction of time’s arrow. We can follow prehistoric humans upstream and downstream—so long as we preserve the thread of narrative, so long as we fasten the shards of time into a track-script. A track-script works in both directions—like the narrative acrobatics of Martin Amis’s vertiginous novels, where the narrator (and reader) moves “backwards” (through a world where garbage collectors deliver waste and doctors make the healthy sick), while the rest of the world moves and thinks “forwards.”
Walking-writing seminar: archaeological traces. Plavje – Podgorje – Sočerga, spring 2025. I walk forward, I think backward. As I walk (forward), I jot down words, lists of words, traces of something or someone, while reflecting on deeptime (backward). Is deeptime a place, a time, or a path? When/what/how is deeptime? The northern Adriatic is familiar terrain to me, yet this “reverse thinking” unsettles my confidence and smudges the contours of the known landscape. It pushes me into a black, empty space, which I begin to fill with stories. Between one shard and the next, I construct a bridge of tracks, helping me continue. As I write, I follow the breadcrumbs in my notebook in both directions—forward in space and backward in time. Word lists lie at the center—between time and place, between forward and back. They probe the question: How does time’s depth reveal itself through walking? My thoughts knot themselves onto the flatness of the page. I leave gaps between words. These gaps respond to my (mis)understanding and (in)attention. Perhaps it is in these gaps that comprehension—under-standing—hides. Emptiness as a space of understanding.
Mud, emptiness, emptiness, emptiness, steady birdsong, emptiness, emptiness, sandstone blocks, mud, slipping, the imprint of a human foot, mud, an animal track, water, nymphs, a coin, mud, where are the terraces, emptiness, emptiness, emptiness, thorny leaves of a bush, Greece, emptiness, emptiness, emptiness, a little Roman girl, croaking, frogs, ivy, molded water, a wall, obstacle and longing, a path, a fig, an agave, wild asparagus, thirst. Wind, sky, where is the water, sharp stones underfoot, warm dung buzzing with flies, dried dung on the exit, emptiness, emptiness, horizon, emptiness, a narrowing, the scent of herbs, wind, rustling, high plain, emptiness, emptiness, distance, grassy nests, emptiness, a large black beetle, an angry horse, emptiness, emptiness, shrill chirping, holes in limestone, emptiness, emptiness, emptiness, a lighthouse, what does mozar mean, a shard of clay in my pocket, emptiness, emptiness, sharp stones, cautious step, emptiness, where is the water, hail, water and man, nearness of lightning, nearness of death and life, icy pellets underfoot, emptiness, emptiness, high fortress, familiarity, torn-up meadow, emptiness, shortcut, a stick, a large animal, grunting, human voices, fear, orientation, (un)safety, scout, a group, organization, large animal on the plate.
From the word list, I extract a few and, like the clay fragments in the Paris exhibition, I illuminate them with the weak light of my assumptions and experiences in/of/with the places we walk. Though weak and naive in their ambition for foresight, this is the best light I have at the moment.
A wall. What feelings, fears, and desires does the view of the Karst Edge awaken? Obstacle and longing. Can obstacles in the landscape be seen as opportunities that accelerate the current of thought? Are obstacles actors in rupturing routine? Do archaeological finds near landscape barriers speak of condensed creative solutions? A path. Do paths gather at obstacles, or do borders carve the paths?
Croaking. Chirping. Was the sound of the world once the same? Even a little? Was it comforting? Calming? Stimulating? Neutral? Wind and sky. They cannot exist without one another. Wind as the invisible image. Of the sky. Sky as the silent backdrop. To the wind. Wind stirs in me a sense of distance. Only in me? It seems that wind, like water, brings and carries away—smells, clouds, seeds, waves, smoke, dreams. Was thinking with/in the wind different from thinking with/in the mud? Thinking above (observing the world from the Karst Edge, closer to sky and wind, exposed) and thinking below (inside the thicket and mud, closer to earth and water, hidden). Desire and wind. Are the lower paths “slower,” more meandering and meditative? Are upper paths linear and “faster”? Then and now?
Fig, agave, asparagus. My desire is sated by asparagus beside the path. I reflect on the paths of plants through time—deeptime plants that may be peeking into my present. Plants as time machines. Beings that move though they seem still. On differences in speed. On Tim Ingold’s idea of history as thread rather than sedimented layers—a horizontal history. Coexistence of worlds. Perhaps by following the trails of these hardy threads, we can walk backward almost blindly, without explanation, calculation, or map. Thus, “once” becomes “now.”
Grunting, human voices, fear, sounds, orientation, (in)security, scouts, group, organization, large animal on the plate.
What were the deeptimers afraid of, I ask. Death, ancestors, other beings, animals—who would eat whom. We walk carelessly; the weather is kind, fear distant. But then, the last part of our journey answers my question, as if the future had been listening to the past. We’re lost in the brush near Podgorje. Dusk is falling. Our phone batteries are dying. Everything around us seems equally impenetrable. A large boar growls nearby. Why is it alone? We are many, organized, noisy—we clatter and make a racket, a brave scout calls out to map a path, someone grabs a heavy stick, half-joking. We no longer talk about fear, animals, sticks, or undergrowth. We are in the undergrowth. Animals in the undergrowth. When we finally reach Podgorje, as if by magic, we transform into humans again. The animal is on the plate. Abyssal time begins here—in the void between fragments, in the silence between the footstep and the echo.
