The Shape of Time

 

 

What we call the beginning is often the end

                                                   And to make an end is to make a beginning.

                                                   The end is where we start from.   
TS Eliot Little Gidding.

 

New Year traditionally brings this inescapable  mood of reflexion and sense of Tempus Fugit. Last evening at sunset I was having drinks with Birgit and Andrea from Brazil, who I believe will feature often again in the future in this journal since she is intending to stay on indefinitely, and has even moved into my old flat at Dembele’s – see my first blogs in 2006.

We were discussing the shape of time. I came forward once more with my thesis that time is round, just like a clockface. We are now sitting at the very top of the circle, and we are beginning our descent towards mid summer and the bottom of the circle. For Andrea time is linear. She begins at the beginning and continues forward in a straight line until the end. But this seems very bleak to me – just straight ahead without  any pleasant new beginnings?  With the circular vision there is always new chances. Not only the year but the day and night is circular too. She agreed with this and we came to the conclusion that her time is a series of revolutions in a straight line, like a ball that is rolling forward; each roll is a day and eventually a year. But my time is not linear- it is definitely circular and I see it more like the year circles in the stem of a tree.  I do not remember what shape Birgit’s  time has, must remember to ask...

 

On the fascinating and somewhat melancholy theme of time I must mention  the manuscript in the Djenné Manuscript Library which Dmitry Bondarev and Yelpha  is studying above. It dated 1665 and the scribe writes:

I who have written this will soon  rest under the earth but what I have written will remain upon the earth. To you who will read my writing I ask pity and forgiveness for any faults and mistakes I have made.