I grew up in a house full of clocks.
Some of the clocks were more accurate than others. The boat-themed clock on the mantelpiece has been right twice a day for my entire life (an accuracy I can only dream of). The clock in the hall goes irregularly, depending if anyone remembers to wind it. The clock in the kitchen — designed and built by my father — is consistently five minutes fast.
The irony, of course, is that, despite being the daughter of a clock-maker, I have never been particularly good with time. In elementary school I was called in regularly by my teachers for a conversation about tardiness. In college I was regularly kicked out of my Spanish class for arriving late (an injustice, given the 9am class time).
Today, my life requires precision. My alarm goes off at 7am. I leave the house at 7:29 and my train departs at 7:37. I leave the office at 5:10 to catch the 5:23 train and arrive home at 6:00. Russian class is at 6:15; dinners are usually at 7; doors open for performances at 8:30 and shows start at 9.
But this winter, things have been a little more flexible. When I work from home due to snowstorms (as I have several times this month), I suddenly find myself freed from the shackles of a tight schedule. I wake up — sometime before eight. I go to bed — sometime before midnight. I eat when I’m hungry. Leave the house when I’m feeling courageous. Make plans to meet at 7:30ish, or around 9.
It reminds me of the summer that I spent without a clock. It was 2006 and I think that perhaps my watch broke, or I forgot to pack my travel clock. I was working at the Virgin Island Sustainable Farm Institute, nestled in a valley on the west end of St. Croix, with wireless internet but no cell phone reception. There was no electricity in my cabin anyway. Time was always approximate.
That summer I got up with the sun. I worked until it got too hot. Then I hiked the ravine trail down to the beach. You may have thought that this post was about time. But it’s really about choice. Sometimes our schedule is beyond our control. But we choose how tightly we cling to it — just like we choose to be in Boston, when instead, we could be here:
Weather: 15 degrees but sunny.
Moods:
Hannah: 7 out of 10 on the can’t get out of bed to jumping for joy scale. Happy to see the sun. And I had a productive day yesterday!
Anna: 4 out of 10. She’s tired.
Ditch the Umbrella 
In 7th grade, despite the fact I lived three minutes away from the school, I always managed to arrive a minute after the first bell. Luckily, the administration took pity on me and never actually gave me detention.
But it’s odd to think that I was ever late when I lived so close, especially now that I’m so scheduled, now that so much seems to depend on being on time, and now that it takes me 45 minutes to get to most places. Funny how things change.
Also, this reminds me of “Tinkers” by Paul Harding. I know we’ve discussed the book before, but its themes certainly resonate with today’s post.
I was just thinking about Tinkers this week. Flipping through my copy I came across this quote, from an excerpt (a fictional excerpt?) of The Reasonable Horologist, 1783:
“Our greatest clock men find that poetry resides in the human process of distilling civilization from riotous nature! Welcome, fellow, welcome!”
Perhaps the different times on the clocks in your house alerted you to the relationship between choice and time.
I have always felt that time was as flexible to me as I was flexible to it. I only discovered it was rigid when I started having to catch trains.
I have always been terrible at telling the time on analogue clocks and have often times wondered if this disability is in any way liked to my inability to spell. The six months I missed in first grade perhaps? We were in Colorado and Costa Rica. But those people read clocks too…
Also, when I was really little, I thought that “quarter of” meant quarter after, because what could “of” possibly mean in that instance?
It took me years to figure out all of the roman numerals on the kitchen clock in our house. I would pretend I knew them and count backwards or forwards from what I understood until I arrived at the correct time.
Have you ever noticed that you actually no longer suffer from an inability to spell? You should consider rewriting your self-narrative. Or at least editing for spelling 🙂
I hate to muddy the waters and I don’t mean to rain on your parade, because I do appreciate the sentiment pooling in this blog posting. But the type of ‘freedom to choose’ that you talk about in this life of the inerrant farmer is unfortunately out of reach to most people because of something crudely and inadequately called class. The ‘choice’ to be stuck in Boston and not somewhere warm and scented with orchids is actually something that people are responding to as more of the US population relocates to Phoenix and Vegas and leaves Poughkeepsie, Nashua and East Hartford (peruse latest US Census).
But even if you move to the south west, you still have the daily grind of the under-paid, overworked job that is now the hallmark of de-skilled and tenuous labor in our fair millennium. The choice to live the life of a clockmaker and set your own hours is a fantasy to all but the most sought after programmers and the 513 writers in the country who make a living on it.
Love the sentiment, hate the reality.
Igor,
I’m pretty sure you DO mean to rain on my parade. Or at least ruffle my feathers.
I hear what you’re saying. Poverty, class stratification, and the decline of upward mobility are tragic things. We should actively consider (as I suppose you do) how we can work to change the systems that hold these things in place.
On the other hand, many of us have the privilege of choice. We can choose between a flat-screen tv and a vacation. We can choose between car payments and a bike ride. And some of us (you, me, grad students, and the 513 writers making a living on it) can choose to bike across Asia or farm in St. Croix.
Let’s take advantage of that choice.
[…] subject of our enslavement to the clock has come up several times on this blog: see for example A Time Without Time. I used the word enslavement: I obviously have concerns about timeliness. (Probably, if I’m […]