Ticketty, Tocketty

I collect clocks. I'm not sure if I started collecting clocks before or after I read The Timepiece, by Richard Paul Evans--a sensational book I highly recommend to everyone, by the way. But whether I siphoned the idea from elsewhere or I started on my own, I collect clocks now. Hmm. Let me talk about that book for a minute. Richard Paul Evans writes novels in which real people are the main characters. In the chapter headings he includes actual quotes from the journals of the main characters. David Parkin, (main character/person in The Timepiece) is a collector of clocks. Mr. Parkin is a millionaire, and as such, has rather expensive clocks...including one from the era of Louis XIV, enormous grandfather clocks, ivory mantle-pieces, etc. But the type of clocks he owned is neither here nor there. What attracted me about David Parkin's clocks was the way they are discussed.

David fills his office wall (and his entire house) with odd assortments of clocks. The ticks and tocks were so numerous that instead of hearing separate noises they formed a rhythm; a unity of sounds endlessly reverberating until, on the hour, at which time (as David puts it,) there is "quite a racket." There are so many types of clocks. So much variety: old and new, mechanical, chemical, wind-up, automatic, digital, analog, cuckoo, grandfather, sun-dial, pocket watch, wrist watch, atomic clocks, biological clocks--well, sorta. the book also comments on how a clock is a strange invention--it doesn't do anything, like a cotton gin that leaves something useful. It cannot measure time like cups measure liquid or sieves measure grain. Without the meaning we apply to its face it is only motion. And yet, no other invention has changed the world so entirely.

We cannot measure time. Not really. We try, but how could we? How do you measure a non-substance that you can't see, hear, or taste? We can't see it, no, but we can feel it. Neither solid, liquid, nor gas, is time a noun or verb? Time is described as a thing, but it is only an action. It is slips through our fingers, it rushes by, it wears us down. I am willing to say time is less of a thing and more of an action, but it's not an action we can do--we cannot play time, or sing time, or dance time-- although we can "do" time and "keep" time. All we can do with time is spend it, yet, we cannot spend it--for spending requires that you have a reserve to spend, and we mortals do not have time to spare.

Alma 40:1--"...all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men." I cannot reason precisely what time is. But I believe a clock is motion only, and that no matter how frequently I check to ask "what it is o'clock," the answer is only pertinent for the task I complete or allot the time for. Time is a tool appointed unto us that we may learn from it. What are we to learn with time? Many things. I am sure, for example, that it matters very little how much time we have, waste, or use. It matters only what we do with our time.

That being said, I come to the point of the exercise. As Charles Dickens wrote, "my time grows short," by which I mean that my time is wearing out, growing thin, I am swiftly running out of time. The countdown is commencing. I have only 40 days left. (More than enough time to make a brick hard enough to stick together, for those of you who know what I mean...)

My flight arrangements are creeping up on me. They're looming just around the riverbend... ( I feel a song coming on...and now that I think of it tons of good songs are about time--not the least of which is Simon & Garfunkel's... I'm getting ahead of myself. And I'm still in parentheses. Oops. Here, I can change that.) --Now, for the concluding remarks, I will share some of my favorite quotes about time.

"Of all, clockmakers and morticians should bear the keenest sense of priority - their lives daily spent in observance of the unflagging procession of time and the end thereof."
-David Parkin's diary. January 3, 1901. (From The Timepiece--you should read it!)

"Time: is tapping on my forehead, hanging from my mirror, rattling the teacups, and I wonder-- how long can I delay?" --Simon & Garfunkel, "Overs"

"Time time time, see what's become of me, as I look around for my possibilities. I was so hard to please. But look around, the leaves are brown, and the sky is a hazy shade of winter." Simon & Garfunkel, "Hazy Shade..."

"Hey Mac--you wanna buy a sundial?" The black market peasant, Disney's "Hercules"

P.S. For those of you who don't know, I love Simon and Garfunkel. Really really love them. I own every album... Mmm. Bleeker Street..... :-]


P.P.S. I collect clocks and postcards. ...and I'm hoping to get some good ones when I go you-know-where in 40 days!