The Long Cycle of Time

Time appears to be linear; and on a short scale it is – there is the start of the day, we work our way towards lunch, go home, vegetate, then sleep. The week goes from a beginning to an end, and the year too has it’s markers – from New Years through Easter and the Christmas Rush. A definite start and finish.

But we can also superimpose these segments – pile them on top of each other to show the cyclic nature of things.

Seeing the seasons come round – again and again – the years on years delivering a similar message. Taking a step back, and seeing life passing through the same stages – in different places in different ways. A similar core to all these things.

There is the cycle, and there is the spiral. The cycle of one thing – a day or a year – and the spiral – where all these circles are connected, joined by the linear motion of time, giving us a cross-section, an unfolding, a direction to all these cycles. It is the life spiral of a city or a civilisation, a long term cross-section, an x-ray of meaning.

Life spins out minute by minute, hour by hour, but it also wraps around itself to generate these cycles – small little pieces building up like bricks, going round and round, forming an edifice of being, a construction of who we are.

Time, indeed, does go round.