Friday, December 30, 2005
Double Clock
I was visiting my brother, who has an old claw-footed bathtub of white-enameled cast iron. It beckoned me. It was late afternoon. The sunlight was bending and fading into yellow-mellow.
The water drizzled in from the spigots at drinking-fountain speed and volume, so I had time to walk out into his cozy, fern-and-ginger packed back patio area.
The amount of sunlight spilling onto the deck and patio since hurricane Katrina topped his gargantuan Ash Tree has quintupled. No longer just dappled sunlight freckling the deck - these were huge sun splotches spilling out everywhere in huge chunks. There was actually a glare if you sat in certain places.
The amber lights on his ceiling fan (attached to a wooden frame that's roofed in clear, pitched, ruffled plastic) are always on, but the fan lost her blades in the big blow, and the four little stubs remaining testify to the ferocity of that funneled fury.
Fluttering wings announced the furtive arrival of a female cardinal, who perched upon the skeleton of an empty plant holder on the fence, eyeing the seed column. She snatched a morsel and flew off.
My departure to check the level of the tub left the patio abandoned, save for the bent sunlight, still elbowing its way around its new playground.
The bath was transforming. Steam rose from the 40 gallons of filtered and heated Mississippi River water. I began to relax into that zone of calm a hot bath can induce.
Above the shower spigot, within easy view, an art deco silver clock clicked the seconds away. I became transfixed looking at it, listening to it.
It's steady pulsing made me imagine that famous zero-sum "double clock" of our lives:
one number showing those seconds known (our current lifespan),
and the other showing those seconds unknown to us (the remainder of our lives).
As one rises, the other falls, in equal measure.
We are absolutely certain of one number, and have no idea about the other, if we're lucky.
But the sum total of those seconds on those two clocks continually represent the sum of our lifetime of moments,
down
to
the
last
one
. ¶ Friday, December 30, 2005
The water drizzled in from the spigots at drinking-fountain speed and volume, so I had time to walk out into his cozy, fern-and-ginger packed back patio area.
The amount of sunlight spilling onto the deck and patio since hurricane Katrina topped his gargantuan Ash Tree has quintupled. No longer just dappled sunlight freckling the deck - these were huge sun splotches spilling out everywhere in huge chunks. There was actually a glare if you sat in certain places.
The amber lights on his ceiling fan (attached to a wooden frame that's roofed in clear, pitched, ruffled plastic) are always on, but the fan lost her blades in the big blow, and the four little stubs remaining testify to the ferocity of that funneled fury.
Fluttering wings announced the furtive arrival of a female cardinal, who perched upon the skeleton of an empty plant holder on the fence, eyeing the seed column. She snatched a morsel and flew off.
My departure to check the level of the tub left the patio abandoned, save for the bent sunlight, still elbowing its way around its new playground.
The bath was transforming. Steam rose from the 40 gallons of filtered and heated Mississippi River water. I began to relax into that zone of calm a hot bath can induce.
Above the shower spigot, within easy view, an art deco silver clock clicked the seconds away. I became transfixed looking at it, listening to it.
It's steady pulsing made me imagine that famous zero-sum "double clock" of our lives:
one number showing those seconds known (our current lifespan),
and the other showing those seconds unknown to us (the remainder of our lives).
As one rises, the other falls, in equal measure.
We are absolutely certain of one number, and have no idea about the other, if we're lucky.
But the sum total of those seconds on those two clocks continually represent the sum of our lifetime of moments,
down
to
the
last
one
. ¶ Friday, December 30, 2005
