tempora sunt tria: praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris¹

"Can the present stand for the whole of time? Yes, perhaps, if we manage to separate it from its own actual quality, in the same way that we distinguish the past from the recollection-image which actualized it. If the present is actually distinguishable from the future and the past, it is because it is presence of something, which precisely stops being present when it is replaced by something else. It is in relation to the present of something else that the past and future are said of a thing. We are, then, passing along different events, in accordance with an explicit time or a form of succession which entails that a variety of things fill the present one after another. It is quite different if we are established inside one single event; if we plunge into an event that is in preparation, arrives and is over; if for a longitudinal pragmatic view we substitute a vision which is purely optical, vertical, or, rather, one in depth. The event is no longer confused with the space which serves as its place, nor with the actual present which is passing...it is in empty time that we anticipate recollection, break up what is actual and locate the recollection once it is formed. On this occasion, there is no longer a future, present and past in succession, in accordance with the explicit passage of presents which we make out. Adopting St. Augustine's fine formulation, there is a present of the future, a present of the present and a present of the past, all implicated in the event, rolled up in the event, and thus simultaneous and inexplicable. From affect to time: time is revealed inside the event, which is made from the simultaneity of these three implicated presents, from these de-actualized peaks of present.It is the possibility of treating the world or life, or simply a life or an episode, as one single event which provides the basis for the implication of the presents."²

¹ St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 11, Chapter XX (http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/augconfessions/bk11.html)
² G. Deleuze, Cinema 2: L'Image Temps, 7th ed. University of Minnesota Press 2003, p. 100 (abridged).