Off the clock

The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.

T.S. Eliot - The Dry Salvages

On the first day of June I took off my watch - and haven't put it back on. And turned off the time on the front of my cell phone. I'm floating free of time, at least as much as you can in this day and age.

The time is everywhere, as it turns out. In my study upstairs the time is displayed in five different places: a clock on the wall, a clock on the kids' desk, a clock on the printer, a clock on the desktop computer, a clock on my laptop computer. If I wanted to dig for it, I could also find the time on my iPod. I can watch time fly without a watch.

The lack of a watch has made me both more and less attentive to the time. I'm more attentive to alternative cues (the kids coming home from the neighborhood school - must be 3:30). I'm less worried about what time it is when I'm talking to someone, or taking a walk, or driving.

I'm in the midst of writing a piece about ignoring time...which ironically has a due date. Back on the clock!