Is your day governed by arbitrary deadlines? A judge’s mailroom delivery by 10:30am? A USDC by 1:45pm? A roundtrip back by 9:00am? On the clock, check the clock, who’s clock, her clock, what does the clock say, the clock’s ticking. That ‘teener is 9 minutes old. We’re all worshipping the little digital clocks on our Nextel phones, paying tribute to them thousands of times a day. Checking, looking, glancing, counting, so many times it’s subconscious. So many times it’s hilarious. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. If, today around noon, I put a little sticker over your Nextel so the clock always read 12:34, how many times would you look at it before something seemed a little off. How many? Congratulations, you’ve taken the first step into the twilight zone.
I’ve got a big old clock on my wall, just like the ones we had in my elementary school classrooms, the ones I spent my childhood staring at for six hours a day. This clock doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked for years, since they pulled it off the wall of an old school scheduled for demolition. They were wired direct so they could all be synchronized from one location. Well my clock reads 3:33. And I look at it once in a while and it makes me smile. It’s not a time piece, it’s not a measuring device, it’s not dictating my schedule. It’s an icon. It’s art. It’s a reminder of how much time I spent in school watching those hands move ever so slowly.
I’ve also got a janky little digital clock radio I found on the steps a couple years ago. The radio stopped working and I don’t use the alarm. It used to be white then it yellowed with age, a sickly yellow like an old Mr. Coffee, stained like the teeth of a chain smoker. Recently I spray painted the whole thing matte black except for a little window where the all-important red digital numbers can peek out and dictate my schedule. The stealth black helps it fade into the background and it’s easy on the eyes. But it’s hard to adjust the time for daylight savings when the whole thing is black. It’s not art. It doesn’t make me smile. But I look at it a lot.
Time to get up and go to work.
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