Was the clock's time just up?
Here's a strange synchronicity. Recently, through facebook I made contact with an old elementary school classmate. We lived on the same street in Virginia and sometimes walked to school together. In 1968, her dad was kind enough to guide her brother and me to sell tickets door-to-door for the Boy Scout Exposition. At $1 apiece, I hawked over 100 tickets, for which the Exposition leaders gave me some prizes. The award I remember most was a state-of-the-art clock radio, by which I could set to wake me up with loud music. I thought this was cool.
In the pre-digital era, this clock had a relatively simple design: Every minute a little number would physically flip down, until the top of the hour, when the hour’s column flipped over. This radio clock woke me up diligently for 25 years, for paper routes, school and work, until January 1993 when it went haywire, the week before I left Virginia to move to Idaho. I tried fiddling with it for a few days, but never could figure out what could make a clock designed that way, want to run backwards.
Finally,I gave up and threw the clock radio away. I owned better radios and if this clock didn’t work, the device was essentially useless. Plus I needed to pare down on possessions for the move.
For me, the strange behavior of that clock was a metaphor marking the end of my Virginia years.
Now sixteen years later, after reading books like Michael Talbot’s Holographic Universe, I wonder if the behavior of the clock was sparked by some unusually high level of electromagnetic energy, somehow related to the excitement of my Idaho move.
Or was its time just up?
Idaho (and now PA) Opinion Pieces, Letters of Public Interest and other aimful musings.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular posts
-
Deliveryman Dopplegangers? Last week, my boss told me that a friend of hers came in the shop and mentioned that she has seen our ‘trucks’ d...
-
Enlightening Eastwood’s Pale Rider By Jim Banholzer With special lights from Brad Nottingham & Professor Tom Trusky...
-
Gene's, early 60's rock-hauling truck 'Merlin' Triple Breakdown Synchronicity Back in cold February, I was chuggi...
-
The Dave Matthews Band experimental muse. We were having a post-Super Bowl celebration party, somewhere around a cacophonous Boise Train Sta...
-
--> Topsy-turvy follow up on John Cougar Mellowcat’s springtime animal predictions First, a few days ago, one of the w...
-
January 13, 2006 Solid Oak View Memories By Jim Banholzer I attended Oak View Elementary only one year, for fourth grade, but I remembe...
-
An Open letter to Senator Larry Craig, as sent via e-mail Friday, September 7, 2007 Senator Craig, I sent a suggestion into you back in Dec...
-
Dribbling basketballs through math Commentary by Jim Banholzer http://www.mtexpress.com/story_printer.php?ID=2005108680 ...
-
Cream of hardscrabble granola As mentioned in the previous post , the judges viewed three submissions from each writer for the Opinion Writ...
I'm, at the moment, fascinated with backward-running clocks. I think they do play a mystical role in major life milestones, and you're fortunate to have not only had examples haunt your life, but to have realized their significance. Recently, I was musing on this very topic as it realted to the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- which prominently features a story involving a backward-running clock. Of course, Benjamin ages backward in the movie. But, it's more of a metaphor for me. I see it as a metaphor for human "awakening" (in any of the rather rejuvenating senses of that word as are applicable -- e.g., spiritual awakenings or other related, momentous "awakenings"). But, these awakenings have a tendency to restore a certain vitality into one's outlook and overall well being, thus creating a backward existence in which the awakened person (or "wizard" as Deepak Chopra might say) carries on. I've touched on this a bit in my blog.
ReplyDeleteOh, btw, I have another interesting story to blog sometimes about that movie... I need to do a video blog for that onstallment, though, as I'll need to be at the piano.