Imbolc Valentine Moon
Realized the other day that our age in years is actually shorthand for an odometer of sorts. This odometer measures our lifespan in miles, miles around the sun. 585,000,000 miles or so a trip. At 67 that comes to 39,195,000,000 miles on this old body.
Looked at that way the 32,000 miles we have on our Rav4 doesn’t amount to much, does it? That’s roughly 1,600,000 miles–a day. Or, we may as well keep going, I have the calculator warmed up, 66,700 miles an hour. Better speed than I get out of my Rav4, too. But, what the heck, lets do a minute: 1,100. And, for a complete picture. A second: 18 miles. Each second.
That means, when I count off 6 seconds for my first infusion of Master Han’s 2013 pu’er, I’ve traveled 108 miles while I waited. That’s a different perspective on how long it takes to make a cup of tea.
All of this is a convoluted way of saying that my 67th birthday is only 12 days away. It has me thinking about that annual pilgrimage waypoint we all celebrate as our birthday. It’s really a cairn stuck beside the imaginary line we travel as our home planet rockets its way around the nearest star. It is a reminder of the cyclical, rather than the linear nature of time. Yes, we count the trips, but in fact each trip is the same as the last one. (sort of. astronomical realities may vary.)
