Time is a fascinating thing. It is untamable, unstoppable and always, very much so in existence. We have tried over the centuries to control and understand it, and we have achieved it, to a certain extent. We have split what we call a year into twelve months, and those months have been split into weeks, which have been split into days. Each day in turn, is split into 24 hours, each hour split into 60 minutes and each minute is 60 seconds. We say it is morning when the sun is up, but our clocks say that it is morning around five or six am, regardless or whether or not the sun is out yet. We cannot stop time, we cannot reverse it. No matter how often we want to or try to (not necesarily in real life. Sci-fi, for example) we can't.
People grow. We are born and we die, and we live in between. We make mistakes, we say and do things we regret and we can never get them back again. Once it's out there it's out there for good because we can't go back and undo it. We can't stop time. We are incapable of freezing hours, days, years when we think we need a little extra time before moving on with our lives. Like it or not, it always keeps moving. Morning will always come, things we dread about for ages come, we get through them and we move on. As much as we can't move time backwards, we can't move it forward either. We can't go forward and see where we will end up. For the most part I think that's good. We as humans shouldn't have the power to see into our futurs. We can make our plans, but things beyond our control will always happen. I think it makes us better creatures over all to deal with these things as they come, not to predict them, not to prepare for them, just to on the spot deal with them.
Time as we've set it out, will always move forward at the same speed it always has. Yet, as we get older and busier time can seem to move slower or faster. Often times it's faster. You wake up one morning and realize a whole year's practically passed without you hardly noticing. A lot happens in a year. A lot changes. And it's meant to. Because time is healing. We think thing through we over come our roadblocks and we move along. It's the way it should be. It is the way the world was created to be.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Resiliant leaves
No matter what the season, I always have to marvel at the resiliance of tree leaves. They are, after all one of the symb0ls of the season. They bud in the spring, these tiny, new, green, tender frawns that over the course of the season grow into their own unique shapes. Oak, cedar, maple, birch, they're all different, they're all unique and they're all special.
During the summer they continue to grow, darkening in colour to deep greens, and they toughen up so they are harder to rip and very hard to crumple in your hand. On hot summer afternoons they provide shelter, whether in the back yard, or by a pond or creek or river, and they provide a beautiful, music as the summer wind rustles through them. It is within these dark, leafy canopies that baby birds are born, grow, feed and return to when they have matured enough to take the leap and embark on their first flight.
With the arrival of autumn the leaves begin to lose the strength that has bound them to the tree branches all summer. As they stop the photosynthesis process they stop being green and turn a multitude of bright fall colours; reds, yellows, golds, browns. They give into the prying of nature and go dancing from the tree where they were first created down to the ground, blustering together along sidewalk curbs and covering grass in back yards. All across the world the natural wonder of these fall leaves paints the ground in a thick, warm, protective layer of colour.
Winter is the hard season. The bare, cold trees stretch their empty branches skywards, whipping easily in the bitter winds, dripping water and snow to the ground below, there being, of course, no leaves to stop it. But the old leaves aren't ready to go yet. They stay, many monthes after they've fallen, mashed into the sidewalk curbs, sodden, falling apart, destroyed by rain and wind, by people walking on them, and cars driving over them. But despite all of that, they remain on the earth, staining concrete orange where the rain pulled the colour out of them until spring returns and the new leaves take their place on the trees.
So yes, I see leaves as resilient plant life. But that's what nature does. It creates, and when the time comes, the things it has created end and take on a new form or are replaced by what is next to come. Eggs become baby animals, buds become flowers, sapplings become trees and the leaves fall and return in their own cycle, year after year. Almost as a way of marking seasons in a way humans are not able to do themselves.
During the summer they continue to grow, darkening in colour to deep greens, and they toughen up so they are harder to rip and very hard to crumple in your hand. On hot summer afternoons they provide shelter, whether in the back yard, or by a pond or creek or river, and they provide a beautiful, music as the summer wind rustles through them. It is within these dark, leafy canopies that baby birds are born, grow, feed and return to when they have matured enough to take the leap and embark on their first flight.
With the arrival of autumn the leaves begin to lose the strength that has bound them to the tree branches all summer. As they stop the photosynthesis process they stop being green and turn a multitude of bright fall colours; reds, yellows, golds, browns. They give into the prying of nature and go dancing from the tree where they were first created down to the ground, blustering together along sidewalk curbs and covering grass in back yards. All across the world the natural wonder of these fall leaves paints the ground in a thick, warm, protective layer of colour.
Winter is the hard season. The bare, cold trees stretch their empty branches skywards, whipping easily in the bitter winds, dripping water and snow to the ground below, there being, of course, no leaves to stop it. But the old leaves aren't ready to go yet. They stay, many monthes after they've fallen, mashed into the sidewalk curbs, sodden, falling apart, destroyed by rain and wind, by people walking on them, and cars driving over them. But despite all of that, they remain on the earth, staining concrete orange where the rain pulled the colour out of them until spring returns and the new leaves take their place on the trees.
So yes, I see leaves as resilient plant life. But that's what nature does. It creates, and when the time comes, the things it has created end and take on a new form or are replaced by what is next to come. Eggs become baby animals, buds become flowers, sapplings become trees and the leaves fall and return in their own cycle, year after year. Almost as a way of marking seasons in a way humans are not able to do themselves.
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