As we slowly slide up and down the temperature scale, wandering through another wintery season of inclement weather reminiscent of the 70’s when I lived here last. I am struck by how much easier life is when you allow the inevitable flux of patterns and puzzles and allow Time herself a voice in your daily analog. Giving the passing of time a value in your calculations. 
I am a terrible one for answering other peoples questions before they ask them, finishing their sentences before they have their thoughts in order, rushing to and fro at a furious pace often without my mind even Turned On. I want everything done right now and just so. Head down to combat the wind thinking only where is it coming from, who is in a draft. Which doors should I shut. Is that ice underfoot? Not: what has come with this wind? What followed the wind last time it was here? What will this ice mean to the soil this year. This would help me create the pattern and prepare.
If we lean on our metaphorical gate and watch carefully we will be able to work out our environment and where we fit into it. We can see the elastic sides in our lives that we can grow into or through and the rigid areas that will hurt our toes and shins if keep fight them. We can see where we can sit and how much we can use without overloading. We can see where some relationships make you doubt yourself – and others, though wreathed in mist, are worth fighting for. We can see that there is no belonging, no quick fix, no eternal happiness, there is only Time and her attendants The Four Seasons. Dawn will come whether we stand on the grass and shout for it or not. The same with love of your person. And a piece of land to sit on. 
Thought, contemplation, allowing an idea to develop over time, are the most natural ways of coming to a decision. It allows for generations of gathering. An old fashioned thought: to build something that will stand the test of time as it revolves and nibbles and changes.
We have to believe in our gentle earth and trust our children (whether they are children of our own line or children of the forest of life). To attempt to control it all is arrogant and ill considered. In fact controlling your entire environment and the people in it is self destructive. It is the disease of kings. You can’t keep it all. Time won’t let you. Life can be diabolical one minute and plain sailing the next and when you go back and think about it there was nothing much that caused the change, merely time. Trust. Trust Time. Watch for her patterns.
Of course you can influence your life. Time is only a journey to the grave if you do not speak up and sing and learn and report and improve and build and grow. And for this we need to put our own beliefs into a coherent honest pattern. What is in your little book of beliefs. What are your beliefs? What do you believe in? Where is your voice in your life. Wild Life, and portent and disasters and victories are all there if you look for them. Once you see the pattern you can gently nudge life with your elbow and avoid some direct hits. Or simply put your head down and work your way through it. But if you are not sure of your manifesto it is hard not to get glass rocks knocking on your eye often. Glancing off your head. And that gets frustrating. Where are the hail balls coming from? Why are they being hurled at Your head? Catch them. Time and watching will tell you. They mean something. 
I have always said; be careful not to sleep through your life. I have seen people wake up at 45 and go, what the hell just happened. Is this my life? Then they run about causing all kind of chaos trying to Find Themselves. When sitting still and watching the patterns in the rivers of time throughout their lives would have answered every single question. Resulting in a more definite nurturing change. A lasting one.
Time will sort it for you as long as you allow it to. If you are on a diet which we all do here and there and if we write it in a diary we realise that every winter we put on a few extra pounds to combat the cold and every year we think OH MY GOD MY ASS IS FAT! Then we eat cabbage for a long time and things go back to normal. Well not normal actually as that is a state of mind not one of us can call our own. There is no normal. There is peace sometimes. This is part of the puzzle too. Where do we find peace. When do have one of those fleeting truly happy moments. 
Because they are only moments. But very addictive moments. To strive is sublime. Failing is part of the pattern. Failing twice is Time’s Lesson. But only if you and I are wide awake will we see it. Puzzle out the Pattern.
Have you ever looked back over a day and thought thank God I took that turn, or opened that door, or listened to that person, or saw that flash in the trees. What would have happened if I had missed that. Those moments are the ones when we got it right and we let the pattern show. We had Time and Her Voice turned on in our brains. Now imagine if we had our minds so Turned On – all the time, that we saw those slow moving signs. Often.
Of course I do not mean to lie down and let life run over you. Life and Time and their Bridesmaids respect determination and intelligent thoughtful purpose. But how often have you noticed that when you force something and bash everyone over the head to get it Right Now: ultimately, inexorably/ slowly, life will teach you a better way, and then Time will be there with you to pick up all the pieces you broke on your rampage to get what you want. And Time will teach you to watch for the puzzles and patterns in our lives that teach us and direct us. If we are awake to see it.
Good morning. Does any of that make any sense? I am really trying to puzzle this out.
Dawn is almost here. I must run.
I will come back with my coffee after the chores to read your comments and see what you think. Wish I could HEAR what you think. Wish we could sit down and TALK this Time.
Have a lovely day.
Love your friend on the Farmy,
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
72 responses to “Puzzles and Patterns”
What? Am I the first today? Slow morning, or maybe I got my morning chores done early 🙂 A great article and makes thorough sense. I’ve been meaning to write an essay about time and am working up to it. In my case though it has to do with current phase of eco-village/living/way (fill in whatever)… and how none of the folks shilling for their workshops talk about time, as in “how much it takes…” All seem to want to dig in the garden and have chickens and blah, blah, but operate on the same time scale as their city life and operate their cellphones and go to eco-friendly restaurants, etc. I’m hoping to write about how much time is required for cutting and splitting wood; tending the animals, gardening and how little these folks will have left over.
Happy belated Valentine’s day my dear 🙂
Ah yes peter, you have said it so well. It does take time and time is our ally in fact. We have dropped into an instant coffee culture and that cannot apply to the life where you build fire to cook the bread.. exactly. Good morning. Lovely that we can enjoy our morning coffees together.. c
Don’t you find, though, that sometimes Time’s signposts are only written on the back. ‘You have just passed an important turning point.’ ‘You have just discovered you will not live forever.’ ‘You have just wasted valuable Time on something that won’t matter next month.’ The signs are there, but the message can only be read when you reflect on the past. And you have to remember to turn around sometimes to read them. I think the main thing to remember about Time is that it doesn’t only flow in one direction. It goes sideways, up, down, and occasionally, backwards.
AH. Thank you Kate. Awesome contribution, maybe if we go a little slower then. And with the signs Time is the teacher. We have to write it OURSELVES on the front of the next signpost so we do not do it again.. c
Life is a wonderfully confusing thing. Ups, downs, sideways and every other pattern possible. Even a Fibonacci (my geek moment of the day there) I need to do some housekeeping today both on the house and on the computer (nearly lost some files and not in the mood to do that banshee wail again!) and hopefully somewhere in there enjoy the puzzle that is life 🙂 Stay warm miss c…miss t
Morning miss t. You have hit the nail on the head, so much learning, and we need to process it into our patterns.. bloody computers.. c
In music, the sound of random notes all at once is horrible. Separate them, give them the proper value of time, place them in order, let them flow instead of rush and you find that discord has become harmony.
Joy, what clarity. Yes. that is how it is. And with a tuned wide awake ear!.. c
I’m humbled by this post and by your ability to put things into words that I only struggle with. Yes. It all makes sense. Time is something I have thought a lot about. But interestingly, today, you use the word Trust as well, and this has been a word that I have recently become keenly aware of…most notably in how it plays inside myself. How I trust myself. How I trust my body. How I can trust my mind if I feed it well. How my strong side can trust my more delicate side, and vice versa. It is hard to be still and let it all play out, but stillness is required. “The world is too much with us” and I find that I have to fight busy-ness with all I’ve got to find those quiet places that let my mind wander to where you’ve wandered so courageously this pre-dawn morning. I would like to transmit the strength and peace of a person who lives trusting Time and “the way of nature” to my children.
Morning Charlotte. As i was doing the chores this morning, moving from animal to animal making sure all was well and fed and still on One piece, I was reflecting on what I had written and realised that what I also wanted to say is that Time is our Ally. If we work WITH Time, Taking our Time if you will. Putting Time on our team ; into the equation. Then maybe we can drift more easily into that still, Timeless feeling. Maybe there is something to all these sayings we have been hearing all our lives. Take your Time! I loved your post yesterday too Charlotte and forgot to add, I kick the door shut with my foot! c
like not only being ‘in the moment’ but between the moments.
oh yes!.. c
Persephone will be back soon 😉
Missed her! c
What a post. I need to read this time and time again. Thank you. I need another cup of coffee and will digest it a bit more. 🙂
I need another cup of coffee too, it was cold outside this morning.. c
Reblogged this on bridgesburning and commented:
These very thoughts have been tumbling about for me this week taunting me into a need for expression but leaving me without. Now Miss C? She just said it all,
Thank you, Chris and how lovely that so many of us are often struggling with the same concepts at the same time.. wide awake you are! c
I have reblogged since wrestling all week with these very identical thoughts that eluded expression have appeared here through the courtesy of your own creativity. Thank you !!! Now if this were ancient times we would be stretched out beneath a tree with Aristotle contemplating and postulating these very things. May sound corny but that’s how it feels.
I believe he also used to have little hissy fits about modern youth and their bad behaviour! Could be fun..c
Bravo! This makes great…dare I say “perfect” sense? Simply wonderful post!
I am glad it made sense, feeling my way through a thought is sometimes a muddly business.. morning georgette..c
A lot to take in and digest here miss c – sometimes we just need to breathe in and out, in and out and things jsut fall into some sort of manageable order. If we’re lucky, we can smile about it too 🙂 I smile a lot…
Your smile is in your words too Tanya. With all your renovating you will be well acquainted with; taking your time and doing it well.. c.
Three clichéd proverbs kept running through my sleepy Saturday afternoon brain while reading this, Only Time will tell, Time heals all and Trust your instincts. But then these all brought me to the dichotomy of how one needs to work hard all the time to live the simple good life and yet caught up in the Rat Race you only have to appear to be busy doing the right thing and usually end up going nowhere! Hardly seems fair. Do we spend too much time trieing to make our patterns match others and our piece of the puzzle then becomes totally disjointed when we try to force it to fit into someone elses’? Laura
Hmm.. i think you are onto something there Laura. Finding your own personal pattern through your own Time as well as being able to work hard to feed yourself (nothing wring with that) and having the presence of mind to be True to Yourself. Yep. That works.. good points Laura.. c
oh wow…where did all that come from? Are you studying psychology of life….there are certainly some thought provoking statements in your post which make me sit here and think about how my life is. mind you at 74 I reckon that if I have made mistakes or taken the wrong path its a bit late to go back now…anyway I would probably get lost on the way… No my life has been good, a life of adventure and maybe now and then the wrong decision but its always a lesson to learn
Oh no, I do not mean that peoples lives are wrong. No not that at all. I mean that we need to be wide awake in our lives. And allow for time. I am sure by the Time one reaches the age of 74, you will have taught yourself how to easily work through the messages, and possibly you allow Time her own chair now. You can more easily see the pattern your life has taken and what you want from your life. c
Beautifully written C. I’ve read through twice now. Your words are really hitting a chord with me. I would say the past two years have been a journey in which I’ve been trying to live more aware and be conscious of Time and Trust, trust being the more difficult of the two for me. I will say that the effort to live this way had shown me some incredible things and opened doors I likely otherwise would have missed. It takes practice, but each day I’m a little stronger. Thank you for putting these thoughts out there for us so eloquently.
Thank you Kristy. it does take practice.. and cognitive living is harder sometimes. The good thing is that we are all in this together so there is support that we can trust too.. c.
Oh Celi, tears of understanding welled up in my eyes about halfway through this post, and before too long I struggled to read through a watery blurr of emotion. This philosophical “soul” post, of thought and reflection is one I will be reading many times over. So much of what you expressed rang true with my own pondering of life and her lessons. You spoke to my soul this morning, dear friend.
I think often we all work together to allow the writing of this kind of thing. Though i have to say i am surprised anyone understood what i was trying to say. However often when I write I remind myself to trust you. Trust that the fellowship we have gathered will understand and maybe even help me clarify what I mean. Oh and i have taken another idea of yours and have a heated water bowl in a hidden spot for the wild things. It is presently heaving with birds! thank you for that.. c