The Wrong Lilies

The Wrong Lilies

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Thyme and time

So this morning I am watering my pots of thyme, and I notice that one thyme has grown several shoots, and that one shoot has grown over into the other pot of a different variety of thyme, and it occurred to me that that is the way thyme is – it jumps.  And then it occurred to me that that is what happens with time, too – it jumps.  Of course, thyme the plant only grows out and about, but time seems sometimes to jump forward and backward because of our memories and thoughts.  One moment something triggers a memory of our childhood, next we’re planning what to have for lunch, or what to do next week, or next year.  What about our next vacation?  What about the troubled parts of the world, what can we do?  What will we plant in the garden this fall?  Next spring?    A graph of our individual thoughts comprising memories and thoughts of now and then and forward, is impossible to envision, although artistically it might be kind of pretty.

But all of that leads me to wonder about the effects of thyme/time jumping.  Oh, I know exactly what happens when thyme the plant jumps.  If left long enough where it has reached out, it roots at the tips and either joins the adjacent pot or the adjacent area until it spreads generously.  Just why it chooses a particular direction is entirely random, entirely accidental.  Do you suppose that all of life is accidental, and all that happens in life is simply luck, good or bad? 


 Or does thyme the plant send its runners out because of forces of nature such as light and even gravity, forces not noticed by we human folk.  And does our perspective of time change in relation to forces of nature we are not always aware of?  And further still, is what we perceive as luck simply the result of other forces of nature too complex or too subtle for us mere humans to comprehend?   It's a mystery.

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