Of Cheetahs and Oxen

The years like great black oxen tread the world

And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

Yeats   

Time is an odd concept, or at least one that I cannot grasp very well. In a sense, perhaps a very big sense, it seems an abstract idea to me. Although I am told that in the world of physics and Einstein, time is a very real thing, it doesn't always seem very real to me. And I suppose that it also depends on who's doing the telling because I now recall having posted something like this before and someone (madcap mum perhaps?) took some issue with the previous viewpoint. Me? I'm much too simple, not to mention lazy, to resolve the science, and, frankly my dear, I don't ...

On one hand, time seems very real. I mean to say that we all reference weeks and years on an ongoing basis. Those units provide a frame of reference that we really can't do without. On the other hand, they exist almost solely for our own reference points. Not completely, I suppose, because I do understand where the measurements of days and years come from — the relationship between the earth and sun, of course. But now that I've breathed air on this planet for almost six decades, I realize that I don't have a true sense of time. In an instant of thought I am transported back to boyhood, and I relive an event and its concomitant emotions. It is current in my head, not forty or fifty years past.

In a sense, I have been breathing air for an eternity: my eternity. In my own interior sense of time, I have existed forever: my forever. In another sense, however, I feel as though I have lived for but an instant. I am naught but a flickering candle. Yes, time is totally paradoxical to me. As I am paradoxical to myself because I had no thought or intention of prattling on like that. No, I simply thought to tell you how busy I seem to get and how many days pass before I realize it.

In the past four days we have attended a wedding and a celtic jam, watched the Wimbledon finals and part of the World Cup championship, taken in the Scottish Tattoo in our local park, and driven into Ottawa to complete several chores. To me, that's more cheetah-like than oxen-like (see quote above), and I guess it's that sort of notion that led to my cryptic and confused ruminations of the preceding paragraphs. I quite get the very apt oxen metaphor, but ... but I won't repeat myself again ... not just yet anyway.

I had begun to change this blog template with the seasons, but I find that one-quarter (give or take) of summer has already cheetahed past, and I still have my spring template up. Or at least I did until just now. This one, featuring a photo from Monument Valley, Arizona is a bit of a rush job, and there may be things wrong with it. For example: in the past, I have used a lot of little formatting styles which I haven't yet bothered to update. So, if you peruse an old post, you might see some pretty odd colour combinations. Maybe I'll fix those; or maybe time will continue to cheetah, and I won't get around to it. Who knows?

This afternoon, I have an appointment with our family physician. She's still new to me and I to her, so I am not much looking forward to this visit. Maybe that's why I let time dangle a bit and demurred over setting up this appointment, but demur I did — should have made it weeks ago. Speaking of weeks ago, as the cheetah runs, we've not been on our bikes for over two weeks now, and it's been even longer since I last worked out, not that I do it all that strenuously, but you get the idea.

I should be able to draw some sort of fitting conclusion to this post, but, as must be apparent to all readers, I am somewhat fuzzy-headed this morning, and will have to just let it go for now. Sometimes, you have to cut your losses and end the blog. Perhaps that's something that I have learned with time.