ime is precious. Every moment of our lives affirms this. We are aware of its inexorable passing and of its end for us all. Despite this urgency, at times we seek to lose time or spend it by immersing ourselves in activities that suspend our understanding that it is fleeting.

While any occupation could become a pastime if considered as such, becoming absorbed in a repeated manual exercise or a numbers or word game brings pleasure. It seems that the surrender to what is not essential, outside of time, is like a continuous litany that leads to an altered state.

Without esthetic, social or moral judgment, the material testimonies brought together here propose that we consider expressions of what a pastime is for some, whether it is under duress or in leisure, now or in the past.