The Book of Questions 5

What are you guarding under your hump?               And the turtle replied:

Said the camel to the turtle.                                      What do you say to oranges?

Qué guardas bajo tu joroba?                                     Y la tortuga preguntó:
dijo un camello a una tortuga.                                  Qué conversas con las naranjas?

from Pablo Neruda "The Book of Questions"

translated by William O'Daly

Copper Canyon Press 2001

Time and Eternity

To bring this Cosmos into being the Soul first laid aside its eternity and clothed itself with Time.

                       - Plotinus

I am full of awe. How can you come up with such a sentence? I am deeply impressed. It is full of wisdom and poetry.
If you deal with concepts of time for a while, the merciless truths of irreversible thermodynamics or time dilation it is very pleasing to come across such a quotation.
Plotinus further stated: "And this is why Time can never be broken apart, any more than Eternity which, similarly, under diverse manifestations, has its Being as an integral constituent of all the eternal Existences."

Let that be a lesson to all the slaves and slave keepers of the clock. Time can never be broken apart!
In the realm of clock time it is sometimes hard to escape. It is hard to escape the close association between clocks and time.

Even as I am writing this, in my room a clock is ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.
In the upper right corner of my screen there is a date and the time. I think it will be my focus, my objective, my goal, my dream, my utopia, to get rid of clock time. Somehow it seems to be the same problem as to undo technology. Was the introduction of clock time an irreversible process.

What did the Soul do to us when she clothed herself in Time? Well, create us. And it is not clock time, that Plotinus talked about. It is something richer, fuller, more all-encompassing as the commodity, the exchange value, the Procrustes' Bed of clock time.

Flower Clock

Flower Clock (Work in progress 7)

Even more time to think about time

Isolation

Sounds negative.

Isolation from chaos doesn't.

In the time before spring 1848 Austria enjoyed an era called the Biedermeier. It was a time of political conservatism, censorship and repression. However, it was also a time of peace and coffee-shop culture. Conservative poets, authors and painters flourished, such as Grillparzer. Another author of this time, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote: "Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom."

In my current situation, my isolation, my own little Biedermeier, my contemplative paradise, I wonder what I miss.

Climate change? Refugee crisis? Polarization of political forces all over Europe?

It may be the calm before the storm, but I keep enjoying every step when I walk the dog, I am grateful for every bite of food I get, I breathe in the same air as my loved one and feel happy, I sit and medidate. I turn just a few screws and leave the rest to others. I practice the art of "not-searching".

If this prepares me for harder times to come, or if this situation will even improve is a matter of the shape of things to come.

In the meantime, I think about time, draw flower clocks and do whatever is necessary. I am here. I am calm and grounded, open for the new and aware of my strengths.

Nevertheless, I feel the desire to share this, to widen the circle of peace and quiet and to get rid of all critical Biedermeier comparisons.
I'll be back with more flower clocks and even more time to think about time.

Flower Clock (Work in progress 6)