Hardy

Thomas Hardy rarely wrote more truly than when he said: ‘today has length, breadth, thickness, colour, smell, voice. As soon as it becomes yesterday it is a thin layer among many layers, without substance, colour or articulate sound’ [27 Jan 1897 ... this is from his Autobiography (Wordsworth ed.) p.293]. The sandstone or slate geologic metaphor is eloquent; but there's also an implicit scienfictional or futurist meaning, I think: that the future is a plenum, plump with possibility.