Time

I like to think about time.

It isn’t a line, you know.  At least, it’s not just a line.

Here. 

Take a piece of thread. 

A nice, long one.  Hold it by one end.

That’s how people like to pretend time is.  A straight line, with a little curve here and there. 

A start, and a finish.  No flow.  Just a neat, tidy, thin braid.

How very dull. 

Still.

Take your thread.  Hold it as high above your head as you can.

Make it a pretty one.  Gold, maybe.  Or a deep forest green.

Now. 

Drop it.

Watch it glide to the ground, like a snake making love to the ocean.

That’s how time really flows, my friend. 

It doesn’t march, or fall, or run.  It glides.  It soars.

And then, when your thread coils on the floor, watch it carefully. 

(Before the cat starts playing with it, I mean.  Fell beast.)

You see how some parts overlap the others?

Time does that.  It loops, it coils.  It slips and slides.  It memory-chills and deja-vus, it prophets and past-lifes and eight-hundred forty thousand missing person-per-years.

Careful.  Don’t slip.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you can jump.

From one coil to another.

Like a little flea.

(Boimp!)

Oh, it takes it out of you, no mistake. 

But it can be done.

You have to be careful, though.  Not too far.  No one needs their first stroke at age twenty-six. 

And for your father’s sake, please only jump forwards.  There are much kinder pathways to madness than that. 

It all depends, like so much else in the world, on how you look at it. 

After all, there are always ways.

But I don’t mess with time much.  Not really.  Not like that. 

Because time isn’t just a thread, either.

It’s a web.

And when you’re walking a web, with gemstones like dewdrops, there is one thing you should always remember:

It is not your home. 

And some of those threads . . . are sticky.

Beautiful Arachne is never far away.

And that’s not even mentioning the cat.

--Coyote.