THE OLD CLOCKS

The old clocks that sit and survey rooms. To think that once they were new, perhaps in a series of packaging or a box wooden or cardboard. Someone conceived, made, and produced these clocks. People hardly care, in general, about old things anymore. I remember the man of antiquity, who used to sit and stare out windows, read about the Lives of the Saints, and wind a clock now and then. He would call over and ask me, “What time is it?’ and I would mention that it was, say, seven o’clock, or four-thirty, or something like that. He would say a funny thing, a peculiar thing, and I never heard anyone say such a response before or since. He would declare, from the clock, or from old couches soulfully strewn with flyers and maybe a Bible, “That is a good time,” and he would mean it, - as if he had some secret knowledge (and maybe he did), - of what was a good hour and what was not. They say three in the morning is not a good time, for example, - because perhaps restless spirits are out and about. But sunrise, later on, - that must be a good time- birth, light, newness! And dusk, - the beginning of rest, the thought of dreams, such like that. So maybe he knew. He knew what he knew anyways. So the clocks, - they look sturdy, and the hands have stopped. How agile and flexible is your mind? What could

stopped hands mean? Is it a bad or a good thing. Is it stagnant or auspicious? Let’s see. We are too involved in time, too time oriented anyways. And isn’t time and mind the same thing? - So the stoppage of time is or is like Enlightenment itself. The horizontal of the cross means time, the vertical the timeless. Now, - the world does go on- but we are in stillness. That is what the gospel of St. Thomas says- It is a ‘movement and a rest.’ We are moving, but in a rest. We are still, within the larger time. We use it as a tool. Well, - the tools that tell it are still broken. Who shall fix them? In university, in philosophy class, they said, while talking about existence as the clock, - that since there was a clock, there must be a clock maker. Maybe it is so. We shall have to find him or her or it though maybe it hides in everything. That old man who used to wind the clocks, - he knows, and perhaps smiles a bit down upon us thinking, “8:00. That is a good time, a fine time…”

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