Time Pirouette Time
Howdy howdy,
Thoughts for this moment:
Just like the solstice, we pivot from darkness to light. We sleep, perchance dream and then...
In Vermont, there is a rare plant called the Fen Grass of Parnassus that is around ten inches tall and makes small white flowers that bloom for about a month from mid-August until mid-September. A tiny bee the size of my pinky fingernail feeds on this flower exclusively. All bees are vegetarians and most, like this one, live in the ground. It's considered a "mining bee" and is so rare that it doesn't have a common name. Those in the know call it Andrena parnassiae. They emerge in August when the flowers bloom; mate; the males die. The mother bee deposits an egg and a packet of pollen in small chambers underground. She dies within a week or so. The egg and then grub grow and emerge as an adult bee ten months later. That's it. Life story. Long night and then daytime...
Do they dream? Warm, late summer dreams of nectar and sunshine... Ten months underground in Vermont's fierce winter. Time to muse...
"Methuselah" is the name given to a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine whose location in Eastern California is a secret for her protection. This small, gnarled tree is 4,852 years young, perched on the same rock outcrop for millennia, witness to the entire written history of humankind. Does she smile? Laugh at our foolishness, or curse our degradation of her air supply? In 66 years, we managed to invent a plane and then walk on the moon. She lived 1.3602% of her life during that span. When she dreams is it slower than a bee's? Or a longer dream? Seasons pass. Time as meditation...
The oldest star that we know about is labelled HD 140283 and the science community discusses it as the Methuselah Star. The namesake, according to Genesis, was a man who lived 969 years. Not a whole lot of science there, but the smarties who run the Hubble telescope will confirm this star to be a "metals poor, blue-shifted, high-velocity, Population II, sub-giant." It's only 200 light years away. Data analysis confirms that this star is 14.46 billion years old, plus or minus .8 billion years. (Now, that's a margin of error.) Since the universe is 13.799 billion years old, plus or minus .021 billion years, we have a very, very old and close neighbor. This ball of nuclear fire was around within a few million years of the Big Bang and over nine billion years old before our sun ignited. A year, five millennia, unfathomable eons...
Time. It's relative, and if you consider our friend Einstein's rules, tricky. Time in 2020, I can personally affirm, was whack. "Hey, it's Monday again. Boom. Friday. Hey, it's ..." From the Chinese year of the Rat - last year - to this year's Ox. OX. A hug and a kiss. The Ox symbolizes hard work, positivity and honesty. One year to the next...
But, we are in the midst. Just as the bee sleeps, the tree endures and the star seethes, we sleep, dream, persevere. Hyperbolics all. Us and them. How can we pack life into these days we are blessed? One by one. Reflect. Re-emerge. Persist. Time flies, but we are the pilots. Compared to the bee, we have limitless time. Compared to the pine, we are a blink.
And so we pirouette from history to the future each morning. Our personal time is unknowable. Get busy or wander. It's your time after all. This last year has been proof of the flexibility of its apprehension. So, consider the ancient fireball, but spend some time with the nectar and reverie, maybe go visit those pines, maybe stop looking at your watch...
All best,
B Mac
