[Video: introduction to The Present, a Kickstarter project to produce a clock which takes a whole year to complete a cycle. The clock will mark the passage of time by subtle changes in the background hue to which the clock’s single hand — a “season hand”? — points.]
From whiskey river’s commonplace book:
Do you really believe that the sciences would ever have originated and grown if the way had not been prepared by magicians, alchemists, astrologers and witches whose promises and pretensions first had to create a thirst, a hunger, a taste for hidden and forbidden powers? Indeed, infinitely more had to be promised than could ever be fulfilled in order that anything at all might be fulfilled in the realms of knowledge.
(Friedrich Nietzsche)
…and:
Now there is present in the world at the moment, or at least I like to think so, an impulse which I have named the archaic revival. What happens is that whenever a society really gets in trouble, and you can use this in your own life — when you really get in trouble — what you should do is say “what did I believe in the last sane moments that I experienced” and then go back to that moment and act from it even if you no longer believe it.
(Terence McKenna)
…and:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
(Philip K. Dick)
Not from whiskey river:
If Life Were Like Touch Football
Driving north on Route 2A
from Vermont to Maine
listening to the news:
—the New England Patriots coach was caught
trying to videotape the handsignals of the New York
Giants—I remember how we six sisters
would recruit a few boys from the neighborhood
for a pick-up game of touch football in the street,
how we’d break into teams,
huddle around whomever was chosen to be qb,
how the qb would extend her left palm, flat,
into the middle of the huddle,
plant the index finger of her right hand in the center of her
palm, and then
with finger motions and whispers,
she would diagram who was to go where and when,
in order to so confuse and fool the other team
that one of us could break free
and go long.Oh that feeling
of running as fast as I could
extending my arms, my hands, my fingers
as far as I could
watching that spiraling bullet of a football,
reminding myself:
if you can touch it,
you can catch it.
If you can touch it,
you can catch it.
(Julie Cadwallader-Staub [source])
…and:
Bookmobile
I spend part of my childhood waiting
for the Sterns County Bookmobile.
When it comes to town, it makes a
U-turn in front of the grade school and
glides into its place under the elms.It is a natural wonder of late
afternoon. I try to imagine Dante,
William Faulkner, and Emily Dickinson
traveling down a double lane highway
together, country-western on the radio.Even when it arrives, I have to wait.
The librarian is busy, getting out
the inky pad and the lined cards.
I pace back and forth in the line,
hungry for the fresh bread of the page,because I need something that will tell me
what I am; I want to catch a book,
clear as a one-way ticket, to Paris,
to London, to anywhere.
(Joyce Sutphen)
…and:
We have now found out that many things which we felt to be basic realities of nature are social fictions, arising from commonly accepted or traditional ways of thinking about the world. These fictions have included:
- The notion that the world is made up or composed of separate bits or things.
- That things are differing forms of some basic stuff.
- That individual organisms are such things, and that they are inhabited and partially controlled by independent egos.
- That the opposite poles of relationships, such as light/darkness and solid/space, are in actual conflict which may result in the permanent victory of one of the poles.
- That death is evil, and that life must be a constant war against it.
- That man, individually and collectively, should aspire to be top species and put himself in control of nature.
Fictions are useful so long as they are taken as fictions. They are then simply ways of “figuring” the world which we agree to follow so that we can act in cooperation, as we agree about inches and hours, numbers and words, mathematical systems and languages. If we have no agreement about measures of time and space, I would have no way of making a date with you at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue at 3 P.M. on Sunday, April 4.
But the troubles begin when the fictions are taken as facts. Thus in 1752 the British government instituted a calendar reform which required that September 2 of that year be dated September 14, with the result that many people imagined that eleven days had been taken off their lives, and rushed to Westminster screaming, “Give us back our eleven days!”
(Alan Watts, The Book)
But y’know, despite our best efforts and fondest, most fervent wishes, the pace of life sometimes still accelerates, spirals out of hand. At such times, it’s good to remember we’ll always have the easy magic of fundamental things:
[Below, click Play button to begin As Time Goes By. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:28 long.]
Nance says
This is almost more subversive magic than I can handle.
First, I want one of those clocks. No, two of them. And the link shows me how to get them, but I’m really trying not to want things these days. How crazy is it to want a clock that makes time seem to slow down, when what we really want is time, itself? And yet I defy anyone who sees it not to want at least one.
Archaic revival might be an even more dangerous and charming idea than the slow clock. When I cast around in the past for the last time things seemed sane, I get bogged down in definitions of “sane” and lost down memory mazes, winding up somehow a bit less sane than whence I came. I probably think too hard.
Ah, I’ve got it. The last time I felt really sane was working outside, tidying up a window box garden, in late September some several years ago. I was listening to my iPod, at about hour fifteen of Alan Watts’ recorded lectures that his son had made available. With Watts, I discovered it’s better not to think too hard. Just let the ideas titrate in through the ear buds and be alert for possible electro-chemical reactions between axons. There, with the window box and Watts, I had a bingo moment, but what I believed just then I’d be hard pressed to say. Maybe I could start again with Lecture #1 and see what happens.
John says
Subversion feels like the order of the day. Occupy Everything and all that.
I can’t believe the last time you WERE sane was years ago. (FELT sane, well, that’s as may be.) Your passage through the blogosphere is positively fragranced with sanity. But Watts would’ve been an excellent trigger for it, if anyone would.
Speaking of mazes, have you heard the story about the people who got lost in a corn maze in Massachusetts (photo below), and had to call 9-1-1 to get them out? There’s some sort of metaphor there, you know.
Jayne says
Well, I suppose staring at the clock would be easier than continually chasing–at the same speed the earth rotates–your hat west over the equator, around the world. The thought of slowing time is very seductive, but I wonder if we might, after having too much of it on our hands, become a bit bored with it? Nah, not me! I sure could use a longer day. And imagine pursuing every link without losing much time? Hmm…
Thank you for punctuating this piece with Durante. Listening to his grainy voice, remembering it from when the annual Frosty the Snowman special first appeared on TV, as well as my father’s own imitation of him, made, for a while, time stand still for me.
I think I’m going to have to take a drive up to Danvers! ;)
John says
I think the common idea of slowing time just disguises what we really want: less to fill it with.
The place where we most often get takeout Chinese food offers very generous servings — yay, leftovers! — but packs them into these just-a-little-too-small containers. It’s flat-out impossible to serve from them, especially in the early going, without knocking overboard some fried rice or (quelle horreur!) a big knuckle or two of General Tso’s chicken. The last time this happened I actually thought to myself, This is a metaphor for something, isn’t it? But what, exactly…? So, thanks for leading me to an answer! (I hadn’t forgotten the question, you know; it had just been lying there on the counter. I’d have eventually sponged it out of the way but for your comment.)
My father’s own imitation of [Durante]: fathers are great like that. I can’t remember my own Dad doing any impressions, but I have ringing memories of his doing stuff like bursting into comic song, like “John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt.” (Wikipedia informs me that that should be two words — Jingleheimer Schmidt — but I don’t believe it.) (And what was that about not pursuing every link for want of time…? :))
Jayne says
You know, you’re right. We want time to whittle away without any specific purpose or plan! That happens so little and I feel guilty when it does, because, well, I should be doing something else–something more, um, productive–like chasing links. ;) (Seriously, lots of interesting links to chase and I want more time to see them all. But then, I want more time to see the world!)
John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt–that was good fun at dish washing time with my sisters. That and Holka come and polka with me, dance away the cares of the day… :)
marta says
I want the clock, of course. It reminds me of a watch I have (though broken) from the MoMa gift shop. It is all color. Each color is a different hour and the second hand is a transparent dial of more color. I must get it fixed. Fix time.
Like the Watchdog said, “Don’t kill time.”
Anyway, have you read The Night Bookmobile? A beautiful sad story.
Maybe I should read more Watts.
John says
The Night Bookmobile — that’s Niffenegger’s, right? I kept meaning to order that from Borders during its last weeks and months (even if it’s available on the Kindle, it seems like one of those books whose very bookishness is important). Rats. Thanks for the reminder!
(Just toggled over to Amazon to add it to my wishlist. There I saw two other — earlier, and also illustrated — books by her: The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. They both sound up your alley, just in case (hahaha) you don’t have anything else you want to read.)
The MoMA watch sounds almost exactly like this clock, only 365 times faster. Are the colors solid colors, or, umm, gradients?
marta says
The watch. http://store.metmuseum.org/color-magic/the-metropolitan-museum-of-art-color-magicr-watch/invt/14011852/
The picture doesn’t really show you the disc on top that moves and changes the colors, but you get the idea.