Time

[Though I wrote this in August, I will post it in September, so that I can straddle two points in time. Opening a book and reading is a lot like that, a time travel technique. Recalling a memory is another.]

Matsuo Basho had a few things to say about time. Like the last cricket of summer not knowing tomorrow is coming. Or, the full moon, and the gathering clouds, and the moment. Or, a crow settling on a branch stripped of leaves, as winter approaches. Time was, for Basho, days and months, eternal travelers, and years, constant wanderers, an old man in a boat, or leading a horse, making his home wherever he rested.

Others have spoken through the ages about time as well.

Standing by the river, Confucius said,
“Time passes on, like this, never ceasing, day or night!”

子在川上，曰：「逝者如斯夫！不舍晝夜。」
Zi zài chuānshàng, yuē: “Shì zhě rú sī fū! Bù shě zhòuyè.”

— Confucius, The Analects, 子罕 – Zi Han, 17

Time

Time, the inexorable progress of existence and events from the past, in the present, and into the future regarded as a whole.

It is August, 2024. The Paris Olympics will soon be over. The war in Gaza and Ukraine still goes on, birthdays come and go. And, as Dolly Parton will someday know, “Time marches on and sooner or later you realize it is marching across your face.” (She’s still good looking!)

I went for a walk at Pawnee Prairie Park (Wichita, Kansas) the other day. It was dark, it was cold, the deer were uneasy, they sensed it would rain. It was not the same park. But who wants the same park.

Nothing has intrigued the human mind more so than the concept of time. What is it that can’t be touched or felt, seen or heard, but is always there, slip sliding away?

Slip slidin’ away.
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away.
— Paul Simon, Slip Sliding’ Away, 1977

Time keeps on slipping,
Slippin’, slippin’,
Into the future.
— Steve Miller Band, Fly Like an Eagle, 1976

“Time marches on
and sooner or later you realize
it is marching across your face.”
— Dolly Parton

No one ever steps in the same river twice,
for its not the same river
and no one stays the same.
– Heraclitus.

I digress. Philosophically speaking, the poet wonders, just how far back can one think?

I progress. the Greek poet Homer leaves us with this thought:

“There is a time,
for many words,
and a time for sleep.”
― Homer, The Odyssey