line, circle, spring

When I was in elementary school I learned about timelines. They are great for visualizing when something happened compared to other events. Time marches forward leaving events neatly along that straight line.

In one of my first anthropology courses I learned some societies think of time as a circle. How interesting. I couldn't see it. Time obviously is a one-way street. The past is getting farther and farther away as we move into the present always striding towards the future.

Funny thing about walking off into the unknown, you often pass a tree that looks oddly familiar. After awhile you notice you're following footprints that look a lot like your own. Finally, as I have now, you realize you're going in circles.

I've decided that the line and circle analogies should be melded into a coil, like a spring. Yes time circles. There is a cycle, a pattern that repeats. But there is also forward movement. Each circle winds atop the last. Sometimes the springlike coil of time is stretched and the turns seem farther apart. Sometimes each coil is pressed tight to the next and time seems to cycle while standing still. In a coil two places along the line can be far apart and yet lay right next to each other. Every Thanksgiving lies atop the last with a year coiling around between them. Each birth touches previous births, each first day of school, each first love, each marriage, each life, each death, coils of time bring them close together even when they are far apart.

In the last few years I've noticed that time isn't straight. I feel like a traveler that realizes the world isn't flat. I guess I am a traveler coiling my way through time.