The Stupidity of Clocks

I dreamt last night. They were fitful dreams, full of aching and wanting, but they were also dreams full of admiration and love and care.  Now, I know those things may seem to be at odds, but you see, dreams aren't concerned with sense or order; only people are concerned with things like that.  Contrary happenings are quite comfortable in dreams.  Also, as dreams sometimes do, mine woke me several times throughout the night.  Each time that they did, I quietly rolled out of bed and roamed slowly and quietly through the house. 

One time, I shuffled to the bathroom and used it without turning on the light.  I know my way around this house in the dark.  I've lived here long enough to manage that.  I didn't want to fully wake up, so I simply left the light off.  I didn't really want to go back to sleep either, but I tried a few times anyway. Every time I began to doze, the dreams returned.  It was like sitting in an empty theater as the houselights all dim at once and there are those few undetermined moments of darkness and silence that spin out before the film begins.  Then suddenly, the huge speakers pop and crackle to life as the projector's motors quietly hum to life and the movie begins.  Instantly and only for that instant the screen is just too bright to look at,  but your eyes adjust. 

During another wakeful time, I just drank milk  right from the gallon, standing in the garish white light from the refridgerator and returned to bed.  And upon waking the final time, I realized that tonight's showing was a triple-feature (Oh boy!) or worse --it might even be a marathon.  Sleep would offer no rest.  Once again, I left my bed and this time, being more awake than in my previous amblings, I smoked a cigarette.  Then another.  My mind tried to glue together the images that were still being replayed in my head.  Those images were reluctant to be sorted out because, if you recall, dreams aren't concerned with sense or order;  only people are concerned with things like that.  The nicotine seemed to help a little. 

I tried to comfort myself by remembering that after all, dreams are only dreams.  That helped a little too. However, that line of thinking also brought to mind just how many images there must be swirling around out there in our dreams or I should say swirling around in here  in our dreams.  Either way,  the sheer number of images is staggering, but still I tried to think about  them all.  I learned that some of those images are unfamiliar.  Maybe they've been neglected long enough to become strangers.  Some are little more than a passing face on a busy street. Maybe they are only background and nothing more than that. You might recognize them like you would recognize a friend-of- a-friend, whom you met only briefly many years ago --familiar, but still they remain mostly strangers. 

Thankfully in my dreams, most of the images could be picked out of a crowd, perhaps some needing only the slightest of recollection.  Some images came forward as old favorites with worn corners, like a well-loved novel that has been rediscovered in the back of a closet. It's cover is dusty, but I know the story well. Those images came to me in passages where the hero falls. He rises again, surely, because after all he is the hero but his armour is no longer as shiny as it once was. It happens. In all great stories, it happens. 

Anyway, I found myself sitting in the kitchen and staring at the clock.  I realized that I was considering that clock more thoughtfully and thoroughly than I had intended to.  It occurred to me, while I sat there smoking, that clocks don't feel the time that they measure.  Well, of course they dont, silly, but you know what I mean.  Clocks don't have a clue about time and they don't care about having one either. They just do what they do.  Like stars in the night sky,  they are cold machines.  Their wheels and gears and rotors turn in their revolutions -- ticking and tocking with indifference to everything else.  That's just how they're made.  That's just what they do.  Every moment of a clock's future is merely the next automated tick being pushed away by the next one, thoughtlessly pushing forward.  Tick! Every memory a clock holds is just a fading echo trapped in it's wooden chest. Tock! I suppose that clocks may be lucky in that respect.  They live from moment to moment and from year to year, yet they remain empty. Clocks don't have a clue, and they don't care about having one, either.  A clock will continue doing the same thing over and over and over until either someone forgets to wind it or has lost its key.  Maybe the clock just becomes too disrepaired to continue to move its hands with any regularity.  And finally when it becomes still, the clock is no longer in charge of marking time, but instead, it is now in charge of announcing its own demise.  It becomes stuck in time.


And while I sat there watching the thin line of cigarette smoke rise and dissipate in the air (much like the fading dreams that had awoken me), it also occurred to me that clocks are stupid.  A smarter clock would be able to run backward as well as forward.  Maybe picking up where it left off and moving forward again. Clocks are stupid things and I think that someone should invent a better one and do it quickly.  Because you see, clocks don't have a clue about time, and they don't care about having one either;  but people do.