Cycles of Time

Kandinsky, On the Points, 1928

 

My poetic thoughts about TIME this morning: 

What if trees kept track of time? What if trees were keepers of the REAL clock? Doesn't Kandinsky's painting, On the Points, look like it's keeping track of time? 

“I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons.” 

— Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Gustav Jung

As portions of time are taken, into our individual distracting pastimes, on the screens, our society doesn't have time for what I value: time in silence, meditating, or watching a sunset. I rarely meet anyone these days who appreciate the silence of trees as much as I do. 

I met someone yesterday who prefers trees to humans just like Georgia O'Keeffe who was also a fan of Kandinsky. It seems to be a lost art and problems of human instincts have gone astray, searching for sex, security, and society, thus, humans are losing so much time, that they could be spending on building each other up, and building cities that are at One with nature or at least built for silence. I guess I am searching for the lost ecovillage. 

I traveled the United States looking for ecovillages in 2000. I found only a peacock farm and a wine tasting party. 

Anyway, Carl Jung has written about the cycles of life, and what he had found to be the most meaningful. Granted, he did not live with iPhones, but he can relate to distracting gadgets, and the lack of presence in humans when faced with the options to communicate faster with technology. Communicating faster need not mean we lose our humanity and our presence with God, I always pause and ask God for guidance. Even now, as I accept things that I cannot change, I can ask others to help create a society that values the time spent in silence. 

Let's see if humankind can continue to use time wisely, and in order to conserve time, spend time with the wisdom of trees. 

“Reforms by advances, that is, by new methods or gadgets, are of course impressive at first, but in the long run they are dubious and in any case dearly paid for. They by no means increase the contentment or happiness of people on the whole. Mostly, they are deceptive sweetenings of existence, like speedier communications which unpleasantly accelerate the tempo of life and leave us with less time than ever before. Omnis festinatio ex parte diaboli est—all haste is of the devil, as the old masters used to say.”  

— Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Gustav Jung

What was in today, is out tomorrow. 

“The forms it borrows change from day to day, and, as it continually advances, what is today a phrase of inner harmony becomes tomorrow one of outer harmony.”

— The Art of Spiritual Harmony by Wassily Kandinsky