Cum Tempore: The legacy of breathing together

We often confuse “contemporary” with “the latest on the market”, but its roots go much deeper: cum tempore, meaning “with time”. It is the act of sharing a fragment of eternity with another being. Two people who were born six decades ago and who today breathe the same polluted air of the cities are, in their own right, contemporaries. It does not matter if one dresses in silk and the other in oblivion; they inhabit the same present, they witness the same collapse and the same beauty.

^{[Oscar Photos.](https://oscarenfotos.com/2012/07/29/fotografia-artistica-contemporanea-idea-y-concepto/)}

Look at the photograph I am posting. That woman lying under the yellow chairs of a sterile terminal seems to have capitulated to the speed of modernity. While the world rushes towards the next flight, she decides to “be” on the floor, merging with the reflection of industrial glare. She is a contemporary of those plastic chairs, but she is also a contemporary of us, who look at her from the other side of a screen.

Being contemporary is not about being fashionable, it is about being present or having the latest technology. Those of us who were born, for example, in the 1950s and 60s, are not relics of the past; we are the pillars of the present. They have seen the world change while their own skin wrinkled, but their current existence irrevocably links them to every young person who is discovering fire for the first time today. The contemporary is an invisible bridge where all of us, whether from the past or the present, find ourselves lying on the same floor of time, waiting for the next second to recognise us.

Come and participate, there's still time. You can find all the information daily in the #Freewritehouse Community. Specifically, today's prompt post: