Clocks

They don’t tic anymore. Many have lost their limbs. A generation has been raised without knowing what counterclockwise means. Wrists are going unadorned in favor of genius-phones. There is nothing to wind in the digital age.  Remember how we learned how to tell time? I don’t either but I think I regarded it as a milestone.

Hi-tech has erased borders and shrunk time so we can call up Mumbai faster than my next thought which just slipped away.

In sports we stop the clock, beat the clock and work the clock but that’s not real time; only a scoreboard clock in its alternative universe where seconds take ten minutes to remind us of what we cannot live without.

Is there such a thing as real time? In school I watched the minute hand barely move to the twelve. It can fly or hang heavy. We spend it and waste it.  This is my hour of recalibration. I need to measure the days by a different clock.

Peggy’s progress has me in a new time zone. We are living in slow-mo. Welcome to glacier time. I say, we, because I have entered her space/time, her predicament. I also need to mend, to re-set my timer, to experience the art of changing lanes and give up my giddy-up. Empathy involves nothing less.

Yesterday her surgeon said she is within normal range of recovery and will probably require another month of rehab. This shall be our narrative. Her body will get over the insult in its own sweet time. The green fuse tunnels its way up through the soil and declares itself right on schedule according to its own clock. Here I am in the right lane, closer to inhale the greenery and perfectly situated for the off-ramp whenever it presents itself.

The first and last innings of life are the ones of great change. We are too busy growing up to know what’s going on and too fearful or bewildered to process the new us later on. Along with our wizened state comes an altered change of pace. To each his clock. If we listen hard we might even hear it toc.