Pieces of Time

A recent supplement in the New York Times Sunday edition was a 66 page, full color advertisement dedicated to - wristwatches. Excuse me, I mean timepieces.   It was an odd ode to time - well, very pricey time.
                                                                                              

The unfamiliar brand names were no surprise but what did surprise me was the full throttle marketing effort.  Every page advertised watches. No sidebar stories - just a slick catalog of  watches.

There were some with faces that contained dials within dials, some had sleek minimalist faces, and then there were those that looked one code short of launching a rocket.

I thought the day of the watch was waning with cell phones replacing them as personal timekeepers.   I was wrong.



My first wristwatch

I always wore a watch since my First Communion when I received my very first one - a silver colored Timex windup with a metal stretch band.  I loved that watch. I remember the TV ad for Timex -"it takes a licking and keeps on ticking."   It sits in my jewelry box to this day. Why? Because it reminds me of a precious time way back in second grade.

And, yes, it is still ticking.

If someone would have told me then that a phone would replace the timeless timepiece a few decades into the future I would have laughed at the idea of a phone being portable and mutating with a watch. The laugh would be on me.

I used to marvel at the watch my grandmother wore, not because it was dazzling but just that its face was so small there was no room for numbers - only short lines with longer ones for 3,6,9 and 12.  My seven year old brain could not understand how she knew the time minus critical numbers.


Swatch watches

And remember Swatch watches? What a fabulous fad.  The serious timepiece got a fashionable update introducing the idea that watches in zany colors could complement outfits.  Their soft plastic bands and bold hues were revolutionary.  Owning more than one watch became the norm. The ever colorful Swatches are still around moving them from fad to strangely timeless .

Then, the knock off watches started showing up on city street corners and designer time became a commodity for everyone. 

Several years ago my watchband broke.  I kept it in my purse to remind me to have it repaired at the jeweler but it never made it.  By then my phone - the new constant companion -. gave me the time of day.

I felt deceitful to my pretty gold watch.  On my wrist, it was always ready to do its job.  Lord knows my phone is not at the ready, but rather it swims among the detritus in my handbag as I play a form of the Halloween game - Guess What's In the Bag? - while my hand fumbles through my purse searching for the rectangle timekeeper.  And yet I choose it over a wristwatch.  It doesn't make sense.

I never owned a digital watch - that was a bridge too far for me. It is a generational divide.  As my kids learned how to tell time, they were consistently tripped up by the expression that it was "twenty to four" instead of 3:40.  I might as well have been speaking in Klingon to give the time.  A quarter to three? Forget about it.  It was and will always be all digital for them.

Analog is the cursive handwriting of time.  Alas, no surprise that I still love cursive handwriting.

My uncle, a soldier returning from Europe after World War II, brought back a cuckoo-clock for my grandmother. He stayed on after the fighting ended searching for his kid brother who was missing in action in Germany.  I guess it was a tangible metaphor that time marches on even when a loved one dies way before their time.  That clock was a constant tick-tock sound in her living room for as long as I can recall.  When she died it became mine and, even though I still lived in my parents' home, that noisy cuckoo tick-tock timekeeper was anchored on my bedroom wall keeping time (as well as keeping me awake during those first weeks.) 

 

Today the little bluebird (of happiness, perhaps?) peers out on the hour and half hour 67 years since my grandmother first mounted it on her wall.  My nieces and my kids all marveled at that bird's appearance when they were younger.  Each spent some time keeping vigil in front of the door above the twelve waiting, waiting, waiting for a chirp of time.

I thought it was cuckoo when I saw that overblown wristwatch supplement in the Times.  But it did give me an odd reminder of the enduring role time plays. No matter the money spent measuring it, time continues as a constant, unstoppable known.  I know that even as 'Frankenstorm' fast approaches the northeastern US my cuckoo clock and land line phone (sans answering machine) will defy electricity if we lose power.

Time is a bandit, whether it is tracked on my wrist, my wall, or in my purse.  The anthem-like Chamber Brothers song says all we need to know about it - Time has come today - hey. 

Now just for fun...

The expression "Time Stood Still" is just one of the things that fascinates me with the video below. The man flying dons a wingsuit and speeds at 100 mph down the side of a mountain in Switzerland.  While his flight takes about 40 seconds total,  to him it feels more like four minutes.  Why does time seem to go slower when we are scared? Neuroscientists believe that we don't perceive more when we are scared but we remember more of what we perceived.  In this case, time really is on our side!  Enjoy!

 

"Time Has Come Today"

written by Joe and Willie Chambers, 1968

 

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
They say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today
(Hey)

Oh
The rules have changed today (Hey)
I have no place to stay (Hey)
I'm thinking about the subway (Hey)
My love has flown away (Hey)
My tears have come and gone (Hey)
Oh my Lord, I have to roam (Hey)
I have no home (Hey)
I have no home (Hey)

Now the time has come (Time)
There's no place to run (Time)
I might get burned up by the sun (Time)
But I had my fun (Time)
I've been loved and put aside (Time)
I've been crushed by the tumbling tide (Time)
And my soul has been psychodelicized (Time)

(Time)
Now the time has come (Time)
There are things to realize (Time)
Time has come today (Time)
Time has come today (Time)

Time

Oh
Now the time has come (Time)
There's no place to run (Time)
I might get burned up by the sun (Time)
But I had my fun (Time)
I've been loved and put aside (Time)
I've been crushed by tumbling tide (Time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)

(Time)
Now the time has come (Time)
There are things to realize (Time)
Time has come today (Time)
Time has come today (Time)

Time
Yeah