OK, let’s get metaphysical: “‘The true present is a dimensionless speck,’ Alan Burdick writes in his book Why Time Flies. ‘The specious present, in contrast, is ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’ ’—he quotes James. The specious present, Burdick adds, ‘is a proxy measure of consciousness.’ It is what we think of as now. Not the general now, as in “the way we live now,” but right now. And how long is now?” – The Paris Review