Fabric and Time

I got reading a knitting book last week with designs inspired by another book I definitely must read, which explores repeating patterns in nature. Apparently there are only so many. For example, the branching of a tree's limb and root system is echoed by other plants and by frost and fissures in dry earth, and even in bark.

Got me thinking again about the shape of time. When you read history it seems like a sequence of events:


But as anyone who's lost a loved one can tell you, the pain from a difficult period spills over into the same time of year of every year after it like a stain that soaks in - and that makes time seem more like a coil:


Sometimes people talk about the fabric of time. If it's a fabric, then what affects one part destabilizes everything around it and threatens even what's further away, because everything is interwoven:


But maybe that's not right either. Maybe time is all just a big wrinkly jumble to interpret however the mood strikes you, knowing it will never make any real sense.