I hate watches. They break easily, they are always in the way when moving something big or bulky, they catch on sweaters. And, I sternly resent the implication that we gotta always know what time it is so as we can always be somewhere "on time". Our car clock is set 12 minutes fast, so we are closer to arriving on time, my bike mileage meter clock is 22 minutes slow, cuz that's the way it is, and my cel phone is eerily exact. I really don't care, I just try to get places close to when I'm supposed to. But, after showing up a half-hour late at Log Boom Park to meet Rick and Dan for a bike ride a month (or so) ago, and being met by stern expressions of disgust, I knew it was 'time'. A nice Somali woman sold me a boldfaced beauty of a timepiece (in either Seattle or LA, I can't remember which) and after setting it, I find myself checking the time, at least every 6 minutes. Now I'm trapped.
But outside, the world is whirring by. Thousands of miles of ocean lie 5 miles below us. I felt horribly unsafe as the Air Pacific stewardess had shown us how to put on our bright yellow life jackets, plainly visible on her, but more probably, transparent in the vast south Pacific below. Some more wine, another chapter of Maori history, another twinge of stiffness in my back...
And somehow this day never existed. We crossed the dateline "today", time accelerated, time was lost, time will be regained. I am not early nor late, I am under the spell of my magic watch.
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