Time is rushing forth. The end of the year is nigh. In a week, the fourth and last quarter will begin. But I have been thinking exactly the other way around until a day or two ago. The year has just started, or so I thought. The end of the year struck me as far, far away. Yes, time is forever escaping me. Like a snake in the grass, it is wriggling away whenever I manage to lay my eyes on it. A moment later, it is gone. And I cannot even guess when I will spot it again. None of this is surprising, it goes without saying. If there are any surprises concerning the year’s passage, two of them come to mind. To begin with, the switch from feeling close to the beginning to the end of the year has occurred rather late in the year. The end of the third quarter, that is. It would make much more sense if the switch occurred at the end of the second quarter, say. Perhaps more important, the switch is quite sudden. It takes only a day or at most two to realize that the end of the year is nigh. And so is the beginning of the next year among years. The best I can come up with at the moment is that the switch has to do with the way we reckon time. To us, it is not continuous. Divided into years, it is lumpy. Very lumpy, in fact. The beginning and end of each lump is thus distorted in our minds. We clench onto each and every year is if for dear life. And the switch is a clear guide to the distortion.