Naughty Present Tense

There is no denying its resonance, but I must confess that I have never understood L.P. Hartley’s contention that "the past is a foreign country." For me, what is foreign is the present; the past is poignantly familiar, a land where everything that was ever lost continues undiminished in a perpetual July of deep lanes shuttered with branches and little owls hunting in pairs along a hedge—and anything true or exact that happens now is immediately absorbed into the fabric of that eternal summer.  Present is a Foreign Country