The Illusion

Not on a wrist, the working watch at the back of a jewelry box taunts and teases, believing audaciously while lying there all alone in the dark, it should be worn, unaware it was rejected intentionally. Somewhere an old woman winds her cuckoo clock each morning and has done so for decades, first thing, as if there is some great meaning to the seconds, minutes and hours, and the sound of the cuckoo's caw, until she went deaf. Big Ben stands tall on the other side of the pond, as a narcissist would, boasting of his stature, reminding the masses that they cannot run from time, until he fell silent under construction. And right there on its face, power up a phone anywhere. The time presents itself greedily, first in line, do this, do that, hurry up, silently taking hostages, capturing slaves, intercepting the imagination by rule of thumb.

A busy woman desperately needs a break for inspiration, and sits down to relax in a quiet room holding in her weary hands the book Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. When she opens up the book and starts to read, the words begin a battle with the ticking emanating from an enamel silver clock hanging on the wall above her head. It possesses a second hand rhythm closely aligned and also very much at odds with her heartbeat as she tries to ignore the distraction. Minutes pass until in anger she cries out, "Make it stop," and she contemplates getting up and ripping the clock right off the wall. Thinking of either putting it in the drawer underneath the sweaters, or throwing it mightily against the opposing wall, she is titillated at the thought of the obliteration of time when the open book curiously demands her full attention and she reads,

"She takes stock of her hands, which are shrinking a little, warping a little, as mine are. Gnarling has set in, the withering of the mouth; the outlines of the dewlaps are beginning to be visible, down toward the chin, in the dark of the subway windows. Nobody else notices these things yet, unless they look closely; but Cordelia and I are in the habit of looking closely."

Asking no questions, the ticking abruptly stops, as if it was never there in the first place and the rest of the chapter she is reading makes its own silent perfect music, an engaging motionless dance. Closing the book, she breaths in and out, slowly, outside of the clock, picks up her pen ready to write her own chapter and it flows as easily as the silent blood pumping in her veins, 60 beats per minute.