I only have to travel a few hours north of home to still find the early morning hours between midnight and sunrise to be more like winter than spring despite what the calendar tells me.
This morning, further north, but still spring,
there were ice crystals on the rocks.
It doesn’t take much change to make
things look different from the recent past.
The future – one or two seasons away?
The chronology of Earth’s history: not present,
opening into past and future, not measured
in hours, years, but epochs and aeons,
recorded in stone, stalactites, seabed sediments,
drifting tectonic plates, and stopped only by
our fallen Sun in five billion years.
Aion (e-on Greek: Αἰών) is a Hellenistic deity associated with time, the orb or circle encompassing the universe, and the zodiac.
The “time” that Aion represents is perpetual, unbounded, ritual, and cyclic. It is a future that is a returning version of the past. This kind of time contrasts with the empirical, linear, progressive, and historical time that we know and that was represented by Chronos. That sense of time divides into past, present, and future.
In the latter part of the Classical era, Aion became associated with mystery religions which were secret cults of the Greco-Roman world that offered individuals religious experiences not provided by the official public religions and were very concerned with the afterlife.
In the constant rush into the future,
I take time now to look back.
A personal solstice when I turn pages
that have recorded my own unsynchronized seasons.
Seeking equinox. Balance within this vast world.
What I learned in elementary school was
that all the famous people. successful people,
brilliant people, leaders, scientists, artists, inventors, athletes
yes, all the poets and other writers
are dead. Who keeps the world turning?
We wear them on badges so we
can pretend to know that we know
that face after fifty years of living.
Faces blur and we’ll forget them again.
Perhaps, all memories will be gone soon.
Year’s end always sends thoughts into the past.
Review and reflection. Celebrations and regrets. Conclusions.
But briefly. Then to a future near
and far but all unclear, unformed, undetermined.
Momentarily, no present. No now. No self.
Writing the Day 