A tree stump, once carved into a small throne, its heartwood now rotted by fungi into crumbling fragments, reminds me of an eighth-century Chinese poem by Meng Chiao: a woodcutter went into the mountains and met two boys playing chess; they gave him something to eat and when their game was over, told him his axe handle had rotted. When the woodcutter returned home, he was 100 years old. Time is not always as we remember it.