3 March 2009
TIME
What is time, and the passing of it? If days, weeks, months, years, are human inventions, created to fend off lonely madness as the seconds and minutes approach, arrive and then are gone, the reality of each moment is surely more than that. Lengthening days are not fiction; the response of the natural world, of life, is not imagination. The reality of each moment affects us all, just as the phases of the moon pull and push at the water which makes up so much of our bodies.
We are on this earth and the earth is spinning in a solar system within a universe. We cannot escape all these things, except, perhaps, through death. And why would we want to, living cherished, precious, lucky lives as we do? All time does is to punctuate our tiny existences, providing a framework to work the business of living within. It allows us opportunities to understand changes that happen, whether they be fattening hazel buds down the woods or more wrinkles around the eyes as one gets older. Whatever civilisation invented the concept of measuring time seems to me to have had more than a little insight into what makes the world tick.
Time is comforting, a friend, something to race against or be feared. A reality that is impossible to hold physically in your hands, but able to be worn and referred to as you like, on your wrist or mounted on a wall. An opiate to subserviate the people with.
But I like time. Although I can’t put it in a box and keep it locked up forever, I can see it all around me every second of the year. Sometimes I know exactly what it tells me, sometimes not. But the continuing observations of natural responses to it give me a joy which is not easily explained; only to say that the ongoing ebb and flow of the seasons are what, for me, makes life worth living.
Copyright, Dirty Nails March 2009