Time changes everything; and where there's change, there's contrast.
80 years ago, France was at war with the Nazis, and this was an anti-aircraft position in Paris. Now it is peaceful, quiet, and prosperous.
(Plus photographic technology has changed considerably: black and white prints vs colour digital.)
How does time create a contrast in the narrator's body in this next snippet?
Around the age of twelve, I entered a growth spurt, and suddenly this blond-haired, pale-skinned, slightly gawky child began looking deformed. My spine bent and curved under the pressure. It pressed outwards and tilted me to the side. Unbeknown to me, my mother had been watching for years, wondering, quietly worried that I might have inherited something that would catapult me towards – what, exactly? A stareable body? Disability? My father? My spine was a kind of question mark.
Can you see the contrasting changes over time in these examples (and the image/metaphor button at the end)?
Jakob remembered when he’d first bought this boat. Brand new. The decks and gunwale had been the purest white, vivid in the sun. Not a blemish, not a scratch, silky to the touch. And the crane and winches had moved so quietly and smoothly. Now the white paint was a pale grey, streaked with rust, chipped in many places, and coarsened all over like sandpaper. The crane squealed like an angry seal when it turned, and the winches were so stiff they made the arthritis in Jakob’s shoulder play up. For 25 years, the sea had gnawed on this boat like a bone.
At opening the shelves were chockers: walls of cereal and cake mix, misted stacks of yoghurt and cheese in the fridge bays, oranges and apples piled high in the fruit and veg section, and kilos of chicken and pork arranged in pink and glistening piles in the deli. Then at 8:30 the citywide lockdown notice went out on socials, and by lunchtime the place was stripped bare. The fridges were black shelves with little rings of water where bottles of milk had been. The fruit and veg section was just empty green boxes with a few wisps of onion skin. And the deli: a vast display cabinet with one sad little packet of chicken wings, like a kid nobody wants for their team.
Time doesn't only pass in the world around us; it also passes in our mind.
What kind of contrasts do we get when we compare our visions of present and future?
