Hands fixed

We ponder our relationship with time, or at least with timekeepers.

Our navigator recently had the opportunity to visit the houses of several neighbors, during a block-party in the form of a progressive dinner.  He rents a small apartment, into which his books and papers don’t quite fit; things go where he can find a place for them.  In contrast, these people own their houses, and put a great deal of thought and care into their interior decoration.  One bit of decoration stuck in his mind later: a clock placed carefully on a shelf.  It had a fine wooden case, and a face that had just enough decoration to be tasteful and to match the environment.  It might have been an antique.  Its hands were fixed at 12:00; the actual time was about 6:30.

Our navigator admits to being more sensitive about timekeeping than is perhaps currently warranted.  The practice of navigation has always been intimately bound up with time.  A celestial fix requires a chronometer accurate (or correctable) to within seconds of the actual time.  Plotting one’s position manually requires several simultaneous (or nearly so) lines of position, and even as that is laid down on the chart it is in the past; a careful projection into the future is necessary.  (The connection hasn’t gone away; it has just been absorbed into the software of GPS and electronic chart systems.)  Our navigator has the ingrained habit of keeping a clock of some kind, checked for accuracy at intervals.

For practical purposes this is unnecessary.  The actual timekeeping clock one uses is, like many things (we’re tempted to say everything), contained in one’s smartphone.  And even this doesn’t see the use accorded, in the old days, to a wristwatch.  The phone itself will notify us when events occur or when some action is needed.  (Or it will take care of things itself!)

So clocks are now decorations.  As much as it discomforts our navigator, their basic function of telling time is no longer important.  Indeed, the most expensive watches now made are not the most accurate.  They have the best decoration, and are bought mainly to demonstrate how much the buyer can spend.  If you can afford them, well, you have other people who can keep track of time for you.

So it’s only nostalgia when we remember the grandfather clock in the hall.  The weights would be raised by a designated person in the family at the proper intervals, so it would keep ticking.  Each week or so Father would open the face and adjust the minute hand to match the time-signal.  The pendulum would pass back and forth, a ceaseless motion.  The ticks themselves would be a comforting background to falling asleep, or a pitiless reminder of how long the night can be.  You’d glance at the face going out or coming home, sometimes with anxiety, sometimes with relief.  And it was decorative too.