I’ve been feeling melancholic lately. If I were to try to find a unifying theme in my thinking, it would probably be about how people, relationships and things change over time.

I’ve been reading a wonderful book by Carlo Rovelli called The Order of Time – it’s thoroughly fascinating, and confusing in parts, and you should go read it. It’s about how time is in us rather than us being in time, and how time flows differently in different places, and how the notion of the present evaporates in the context of the universe. Philosophy, poetry and physics all in one book.

There is something beautiful about old things.
The creak of a joint
History of a glorious past
Wrinkle of a life well-lived
Collected stories from a lifetime
And the rust of days gone by.

Some things, though, wear more acutely
Than time, oxygen and water.
Like gradual disconnections
The sharpness of sour truths
And how the beauty of a siren call
Ends, usually, on the rocks.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd