The grandfather clock is sounding ten 2-note bongs. My ear plucks the sound through my general mental chatter and I note the time. I wouldn’t have to. When I don’t want to hear it, I don’t. That’s one of the beauteous developments that come from living with wind-up clocks.
It is speculated by mathematicians and physicists that time is the fourth dimension of what could conceivably be as many as eleven aspects or permutations of reality. I have no trouble imagining time as a stretchy toy in one metaphoric hand of God. God’s imagined hands, however many there are, may play with time but God’s heart is always personal love now, an incomprehensible aspect of reality more real than real to me though often mysteriously invisible in time, or for a time.
Now the second clock, the one that really was my grandfather’s, the clock where Dad over-painted the gold because Mom thought it looked trashy, is striking 10. I note that too. I have a sense now of what time it is. It’s tenish.
It is quite possible to keep both clocks accurate but you’d have to fine tune them often, making minute adjustments to the pendulum, lengthening or shortening it in it’s arc thus slowing or speeding up the bites of time eaten by that particular clock. I tired of this fussiness many years ago and have settled for lining both clocks up with Eastern Standard once a week or whenever I really need accuracy, like New Year’s Eve, when I’m trying to coral my rowdy friends into a unified display that will at least marginally accompany the shotgun blasts and fireworks of my neighbors. When you want co-ordination, accurate timing is mandatory. When you just want to be at work on time the fast clock will let you know you might want to think about getting in the car. No hurry. The second one hasn’t even bonged yet.
If you are vacuuming or daydreaming during the first one, chances are you’ll catch the second. If you’re napping and don’t want to sleep past the hour, the first one will awaken you and the second one will inform you while you lie there remembering your dreams. Or you can take a cat nap between the first and second one and feel you’ve lost nothing.
I like that my time is independent of batteries, cables, radio waves, computer chips and electricity. My clocks need only me, their winder, to notice when they’re sounding tired and give them an invigorating rewind. I like the relationship.
In this house you always know about what time it is regardless of power outages. And I appreciate the fact that neither clock is absolutely accurate, reminding me always that I’m on my time, for better or worse.
Contrast that with the $9.99 digital wrist watch I bought last year from Wal-Mart. The directions were microscopic, complex and inaccurate. I spent a year of my life trying to form a relationship with that watch and ended up murdering it when my part of the world shifted to daylight savings time this spring. I gave two hours of my life that I will never get back again, plus the one we all lost to ‘springing forward,’ attempting to make the appropriate adjustment to my timepiece. I put it on the work bench and smashed it repeatedly with a hammer. Damn its unlabeled button one, button two, button three. I hammered it into primordial dust, into cosmic soup, and with any luck at all, into another dimension where I will never never never have to go. I was very far away from love in my heart at that time.
It is speculated by mathematicians and physicists that time is the fourth dimension of what could conceivably be as many as eleven aspects or permutations of reality. I have no trouble imagining time as a stretchy toy in one metaphoric hand of God. God’s imagined hands, however many there are, may play with time but God’s heart is always personal love now, an incomprehensible aspect of reality more real than real to me though often mysteriously invisible in time, or for a time.
Now the second clock, the one that really was my grandfather’s, the clock where Dad over-painted the gold because Mom thought it looked trashy, is striking 10. I note that too. I have a sense now of what time it is. It’s tenish.
It is quite possible to keep both clocks accurate but you’d have to fine tune them often, making minute adjustments to the pendulum, lengthening or shortening it in it’s arc thus slowing or speeding up the bites of time eaten by that particular clock. I tired of this fussiness many years ago and have settled for lining both clocks up with Eastern Standard once a week or whenever I really need accuracy, like New Year’s Eve, when I’m trying to coral my rowdy friends into a unified display that will at least marginally accompany the shotgun blasts and fireworks of my neighbors. When you want co-ordination, accurate timing is mandatory. When you just want to be at work on time the fast clock will let you know you might want to think about getting in the car. No hurry. The second one hasn’t even bonged yet.
If you are vacuuming or daydreaming during the first one, chances are you’ll catch the second. If you’re napping and don’t want to sleep past the hour, the first one will awaken you and the second one will inform you while you lie there remembering your dreams. Or you can take a cat nap between the first and second one and feel you’ve lost nothing.
I like that my time is independent of batteries, cables, radio waves, computer chips and electricity. My clocks need only me, their winder, to notice when they’re sounding tired and give them an invigorating rewind. I like the relationship.
In this house you always know about what time it is regardless of power outages. And I appreciate the fact that neither clock is absolutely accurate, reminding me always that I’m on my time, for better or worse.
Contrast that with the $9.99 digital wrist watch I bought last year from Wal-Mart. The directions were microscopic, complex and inaccurate. I spent a year of my life trying to form a relationship with that watch and ended up murdering it when my part of the world shifted to daylight savings time this spring. I gave two hours of my life that I will never get back again, plus the one we all lost to ‘springing forward,’ attempting to make the appropriate adjustment to my timepiece. I put it on the work bench and smashed it repeatedly with a hammer. Damn its unlabeled button one, button two, button three. I hammered it into primordial dust, into cosmic soup, and with any luck at all, into another dimension where I will never never never have to go. I was very far away from love in my heart at that time.
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