time and its textures

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in. - L Cohen

The photo is a detail of a wooden seat beside the Zen Garden in St Mungo's museum. I had planned to take a picture of the raked stones, but this was far more interesting. There seems so much character in the different wood that makes up the seat. It has knots, it has rings of growth, it has the texture of the grain when it was cut.

Right there is a grand story of passing time on this planet. A picture over time if we are able to read the language of the knots and grooves. I tried to apply this to myself. I am a pipsqueak in time compared to the wood. But, slice me with the cosmic chainsaw, and what are the textures of my own existence?

There isn't just one texture, much like the wood: there are many.

A real texture in my day is my intellectual engagement with it. I read the newspapers, I give my opinions on things. I can be logical, I can be simplistic. I can crack a gag. This is a texture of the mind. It is the brain's engagement with the order of things. I can quote sources and other Intellectuals to support my cause. I can de-construct a motive. I can deduct, I can adduce. This is one of the ways I see myself, that gives a texture to who I perceive myself as.

Another one is an emotional texture. I am an honest person. I am sentimental. Matters of the heart carry me off like a magical carpet. These colour my day. I fall in love. I want love. I open like a flower to sunshine when I see wee loving gestures between people. I have knots and scars that add to this texture. I need to feel loved for who I am, scary as that can be. And I give love: most of all I give love.

And then there is the texture of the soul. It's not the same thing as the texture of the heart. The soul is the embodiment of the journey. Its is the template texture. The heart can soften and harden throughout, creating broader or narrower rings, but it is essentially part of the soul's journey. Use that cosmic chainsaw to cut us in half and the soul would carry the signature of this, from birth to death. It would be unique; unique in this Universe of a billion billion billion different things. Such infinitely textured creatures that we are.

So forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything. It lets the light in, and gives each and every one of us these knots, these broad and narrow textured rings.