Contemplative Inquiry

Last weekend ‘the clocks changed’ as the saying goes in my part of the world. Without any change in the heavens, the dawn and sunset alike were, overnight, officially an hour earlier. It happens every year, as does the reverse process in March. This is now culturally unremarkable. It has been happening for many, many years.

Clock time has had a huge influence in my life, whether I like it or not. I was given my first wrist watch at the age of eight and it seemed like a move toward adult empowerment. I didn’t notice any loss, at first, until it became clear that the empowerment offered was largely a self-regulating capacity for meeting other people’s requirements, especially concerned with some form of work. No actual self-direction was involved.

Since the coming of the mobile phone and its evolution into a multi-purpose device, the regulation of our time has if anything tightened. There is the added sense of being permanently on call and indeed of round the clock surveillance. The wrist watch stands as a quaint form of relative freedom, or at any rate spaciousness. I carry a phone whilst also wearing a wrist watch out of habit, nostalgia and a slight element of defiance.

My watch is old and this year I nearly retired it, in a permanent summer time, to a pleasant space in my home. But I couldn’t do it. I would be losing the companionship it provides. I re-read a poem I wrote some years ago and decided to keep the watch with me on my wrist.

Am I out of date
To wear a wrist watch?
I carry a phone,
after all.

Once you seemed so advanced and ‘digital’,
For you did not tick and tick and tick,
And I did not wind you up.

Over the years,
Batteries have died, and been replaced.
Straps have come and gone.
But your face, just a little scratched,
remains the same,
Old friend,

While time keeps moving on.