Only now

Dan Simmons, Olympos (brilliant, energetic, completely off the wall, like going through a hole into someone's nightmare, highly reccommended - though I would distance myself from his characterisation of Muslims as world-destroying fanatics).  Anyway, he has Orphu of Io say:
'What is reality except a standing quantum wavefront collapsing through probability states? ... How does the human mind work except as a sort of interferometer perceiving and collapsing those very wavefronts?' (Orion Books, 2006, p. 545)

Or, less exactly: there is only now. And human imagination.

He also has: 'Context is to data what water is to a dolphin.' p. 554.

Anyway, there is only now. But we incapable of living in 'now': we can only live with a narrative of past and future, of continuity and change, of essence and ephemeral, of self in time and place. We live in context. Or, we continually create context by which to make sense of the 'now' we are living in. That is, we make our world personally and corporately in the context of the world continually being made for us.