Why is present (or presence) elusive ( and illusionary)

When I was young I became aware that the way I viewed the world was distorted by my space, by my perspective... I had a fantasy of creating art which included the frame of the creator's perspective as well as the object perceived. Sort of like painting the window through which one was looking as well as the view. Decades later, I began to grasp the fleeting nature of time's distortion upon perception. The principles which explain what we perceive as matter are only probabilities because the tool of life with which we measure reality exists only in presence. The defining of reality is impossible because definition, or resolution if you wish, are inherently "backward" looking measuremeants, thus obsolete before comprehension. We can only "Be Here Now".