Marching on

The inevitable march of time. And the inadequacy of words to explain it.

That's what I've been thinking about. Too depressing? Too dramatic? Not the best topic for a blog post, maybe?

Still, sometimes a grey March day calls for some melacholy, doesn't it? Don't let it get you down, but I feel like indulging in a little Dylan Thomas.

The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocksDrives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging manHow of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
---Dylan Thomas

The language here is so strange and beautiful. The way he uses forceful words for normally gentle images: the fragile flower's stem is a "fuse" through which the explosive life force, or life cycle, will come---and ultimately, bring the flower's end just as certainly as it brought its beginning. Or the image of a greedy mouth "leeching" from the "fountain head": conveying the fact that, even at the "fountain head" or source of life; that is, at the very moment when life begins; time has already begun its inevitable draining of that life, its countdown to the end.

I guess you become more aware of this as you grow older. As you see others grow older around you. But I heard people say things like this all the time when I was a kid: "Time moves faster as you get older!" "You wouldn't believe it, but it seems like just yesterday when I was a kid myself!" I didn't believe a word of it. The words themselves were not enough to make that truth feel true to me. I guess there are some things that only experiences can bring home to you. (I'm sure I have just as many blind spots now: things I'm convinced I understand, but in twenty years, I'll think, "Wow, I had no idea!")

Still, if any words can capture that feeling of helplessness against time, that sense of being so small and fragile and stupid amid all those swirling forces around us, wouldn't they be these?:

And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars

Who am I to try and explain this with words, anyway? You've felt it, though: how moments can be both endless and fleeting. How the mundane can feel so all-consuming and yet so unimportant. How you can feel like life has brought you to some new understanding---and it's important---and yet it's so much less than what you want to know. How the prospect of eternity can be simultaneously so appealing and so terrifying. How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.