Surely a remedy might bring about its problem, a recompense its sorrow; a moment might be longer than a year, and backwards run, or twist like an opaline fish gasping in the sunlight. Star, man, beast and atom, alike are helpless before the simple mysteries of duration; and die upon an impossible rack. O pity! O Mnemosyne, a trollop you are!

—P. Garza, Of the ticking of a clock, 1864
(trans. Harriet Oberheim)