The Terrible Now — Vincent Quatroche

The Terrible Now In a conversation with a friend recently discussing the impending publication of this latest collection of my work the subject of the title surfaced When I remarked I intended to employ the title The Terrible Now the reaction was rather mixed The central question that seemed to go begging was What s so Terrible about Now I realized that a good point or least a valid question had been raised Despite the overwhelming negative denotation and connotations associated with the word Terrible I believe in the using the term in conjunction with Now creates alternative possibilities to understand what I wish to convey by The Terrible Now Indeed if you look up the word terrible in the dictionary the news is not good Synonyms such as fearful frightful appalling dire horrifying and dreadful are predominate in the definition The word terrible is derived from the Greek terrin to tremble or Latin terribillis frightful And over a period of time the severity of the definition has grown in intensity In 1526 the term was seen as a weakened sense of very bad By 1833 the negative sense had increased to be defined as extremely and in 1930 extremely badly is added however awkwardly I believe we get the point But there is a usage of this extreme description of the definition I find most interesting It can be found listed fourth on the possible ways to interpret meaning and is as follows formidably great as in a terrible potential It is from this point I will try and explain something of what I believe The Terrible Now is all about As you hold this book in your hands at this very moment you are indeed experiencing the Terrible Now However transitory elusive and even illusionary I defy you to hold on to this second that just passed and this new one that is now gone Now I don t want to digress into Sophistry here but really you have to admire the Sophist those ancient Greek philosophers who pissed everybody off so long ago with their exanima