The invisible witness

One of the enchanting highlights of my backyard is its clock, which I can even see from the pool. When I swim or float, I feel so much in the moment that when I look back at it to keep track of time, I am incredulous that barely a few minutes have passed. That must mean I was really in the moment, and experienced what Frédéric Lenoir, a joy philosopher, said of what the present moment makes us do: "to touch eternity".

I have always liked clocks, and as soon as I could wear one (6 yo or so), watches. I grew up in a home with a "grandmother clock" (see picture above) that would offer us its melody every quarter of hour, 4 tones per 15 min, and each hour would loudly resonate like a gong as it counted the number of blocks of 60 minutes it indicated. My mother had to wind it up by pulling chains that lift weights, and it felt somewhat magical to me. It was (and still is) a reassuring presence and made the idea of a home without one a concerning improbability. Even though the one I got in Minnesota in my thirties was not musical like that, the fact that it was big and visible from various points of the main floor made it feel like the soul of this old 1940s home we were renting for 3 years.  Years later, I remember Kristof sitting in front of it just to catch the arm for the minutes move, like I had done myself when I was about his age ! During the pandemic, we even had fun looking for many seconds at the digital clock of the oven, to make sure we saw the minutes change digits, at which point we emitted a joyful, triumphant exclamation. 

After a series of love affairs with watches of various kinds, because I didn't have time to replace the battery, or for all kinds of other reasons, as a compensation, the windows on measured time multiplied in the home. I even used to have a tiny alarm clock in the bathroom at my other home, and now I have a small clock in my bedroom (which I must remove every time my boyfriend stays over because the predictability of the tic-tic sound interferes with his sleep, as if the rhythmic noise indicated tiptoeing towards death...).

A diner-style clock that was in my studio area in the other home had followed and oriented me in the yellow house. I had not bothered hanging it at the green house, hesitant to fully settle in as I was developing "moving in fatigue"... But in The House of Enchantments, it was and had to feel like my own place, at last. I soon realized the arms were not moving so I changed the battery. Then, some time later, as it was on the counter, I could hear its heartbeat, but the time was the same. A discreet tic-tic, but no movement. Strange. I thought there was something broken. Maybe it was cheap quality. So remote from good old days, I figured that clock repairers were probably as rare as seamstresses or shoe cobblers... I felt something similar to grief. I needed this window to the soul of the home... And I don't agree with the culture of consumerism and disposability of all stuff. I like to make things last as long as I can (I still have clothes from high school and I wear the same barrette I used when I was 6 yo). I guess I decided to "give it some time", waiting for some inspiring answer or solution to appear.

A few weeks later, I noticed that my loyal outdoor clock seemed about 5 min behind. Five minutes is not a big difference (at least not big enough to change the battery immediately), but last week I was quite disconcerted to notice a few hours difference. How can time slow down "that fast" is a mystery. 

Renée, a great friend of mine, has always been fascinated by time. When I was a young adult and student, I told her about a workshop on time management I had attended.   We used the tips and strategies for a while and I am still a strong believer in "buffer periods" within any busy schedule (not only to catch one's breath in a packed agenda but also leave room for the unexpected). Many years later, she introduced me to Krishnamurti, who said that time is a perception, or an invention of thought. He even wrote a book called "The Ending of Time." Although very useful and seemingly pervasive in our lives, I came to agree with that: time is a construct. Even though we view it as a superpower we try to conquer ("I need to find the time"), a rival ("I am in a race against time", "he beat the clock") or a punitive, tyrannical deity through filling out time sheets or having to account for our time, time is in fact a witness to our life, as much as I would like to believe it can be paused and revisited in our own terms by creating a time-traveling machine like in one of my favorite movies, "Back to the Future". After going through many losses, I stopped believing that "time heals all wounds". In fact, it is what happens during this time, in the moment, what we do with intention that will take care of the healing. Not time itself, which is only a silent, invisible, intangible witness. 

Is time linear, like in history textbooks, geological time, or graphs in physics, or is it circular, cyclical, like the motion of the arms in the clock ? I like to think of time, or the life it witnesses, as a spiral process. The spiral is the only way I can think of that integrates the cyclical nature of existence and the moving forward through aging and accumulation of wisdom. I resist the idea of rigid stages and reject the idea that there is "a time for studying" (youth), "for dating",  "having babies for women" (biological clock), "for play" (like after working really hard... but then you are so exhausted from trying to obey your workplace's corruption of concept of time through productivity that you don't have the energy for self-care or fun), "wearing bikinis" (not beyond a certain age) etc. I often wondered why so many men do not seem subjected to that kind of rule, as they can play, have babies, party etc at any given point of their lives. With time often comes the concept of expiration date. And I don't like that. I want to be all of that all at once every day of my life: woman, mother, learner, artist, romantic partner, world traveler etc.

For some, time remains an obsession, a currency to use in transactions, or an important parameter in certain competitive activities. This morning, as I was reflecting on time, and after my mom sent me the picture of her clock before mentioning she was about to go to the movies to view "Le Temps d'un Été" (The Time of a Summer), I had an idea about my diner clock. What if it needed to be on the wall instead of lying on the counter ? As soon as I move it upright by having her sit on the couch (I didn't have nails long enough yet to hang it), she... resurrected. Her arms moved. Time flowed. That was it ! She just could not have a life of meaning by being forced to look at the ceiling like she had for over a year. She had to witness life, my life and my growth. (and upon reviewing this paragraph, I realized I had unconsciously given gender pronouns "she/her", either because she deserved the rank of a goddess, or simply because it is my native French that resurfaced, and the word for clock, "horloge", is a noun of feminine gender in my mother tongue).

Dear time, the fact that you are everywhere and nowhere, evaporating like fantasies of precious gemstones, mysterious shapeshifter as you enter the diversity of our perceptive minds and sacred to those who love makes me think that you are of the divine realm. Thank you for bearing witness to my joys, sorrows, dreams and heartbeats as enchantingly as the home you are now the soul for.