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The Watch
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Janra: Stop! Stop. You're going way overboard. He got your point. In fact, I think he got your point half an hour ago. He--
Pater: Could I interrupt for a moment?
Janra: Certainly. What is it?
Pater: I know this is going to sound REALLY strange, but I want a watch.
Vespucci, Janra, Metacult: Huh?
Pater: You heard me.
Janra: But why?
Pater: I know this is going to sound strange, but I want one.
To you a watch represents all sorts of problems, and I don't wonder if you're dumping too much on it. But that's another issue. I don't have the ticking clock in me that you do. There's an issue of sensitivity--I know you hate watches and probably planners, but I burn people by being late and forgetting that just an hour's delay to me is not "just" an hour to them.
Is it really impossible to make a watch that can represent liturgical time, or even hollow out a space liturgical time can abide in? I thought it was possible now to make a watch that will keep track of sunrise and sunset. Scientific engineering can't do some things, but could there be another kind of engineering? I suppose that "even" that technical marvel in your catalogue, the watch that knows how long something feels like, would make an awfully neat conversation piece.
Metacult: I think I may know of just the thing for you.
This watch is a sort of hybrid. Part of it is traditional electronic--something that tells hours, minutes, and seconds, that displays the date, and has a timer, alarm, and a stopwatch accurate to the nearest hundredth of a second--and for that matter it's water resistant to two hundred meters. It's a bit battered--which adds to its masculine look.
But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part has an exquisite sensitivity to liturgical rhythm, such as purely electronic gadgetry could never deliver. And it is a connected time, a part of the Great Dance that moves not according to the wearer's emotions alone but what the Great Choreographer orchestrates. It moves in beautiful ordered time. And there is more. It can enter another person's or place's time, and fit. Among other things.
Pater: This is great! Where can I get one?
Metacult: Just a second while I take off my watch... here's the littlest part. The rest is already inside your heart.
The Horn of Joy: A Meditation on Eternity and Time, Kairos and Chronos
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The Watch
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