    54

    Tennis Time and the Mental Clock

    "I long for an experiment that would examine, by means of electrodes

    attached to a human head, exactly how much of one's life a person devotes to

    the present, how much to memories, and how much to the future.  This

    would let us know who a man really is in relation to his time.  What human

    time really is.  And we could surely define three basic types of human being,

    depending on which variety of time was dominant."

    Milan Kundera

    "a turning of our states of consciousness toward the future...[makes] our

    ideas and sensations succeed one another with greater rapidity; our

    movements no longer cost us the same effort."

    Henri Bergson

    "If man's reach does not exceed his grasp then what's a heaven for?"

    Robert Browning

    Many chapters ago, we visited a peculiar creature: the spadefoot toad

    of Arizona.  During long dry spells, the toad nursed the stores of moisture

    and food packed away in its cellular structure by crawling under the sand,

    shutting down its metabolic systems, and slipping into slumber.  Lethargy

    was the life-saver that allowed the snoozing beast to go for months--perhaps

    even years--without a sip of water.

    On the other hand, when an infrequent shower soaked the desert floor,

    the toad shook off its torpor, wriggled to the surface, cried out for company,

    listened for the croaked sounds of a gathering crowd, then headed for the

    nearest puddle.  There, it leaped into a frenzy of action, wooing females at a

    rapid rate, then grappled with them in sexual ecstasy.  Its manic eroticism

    was as much a survival mechanism as its former inertia.  For only by

    coupling quickly could the toad sire a new generation that might grow to

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