...Time Indeed Passes, and We Pass with It. - Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
About three months ago, he began to realise his self-indulgence in procrastination. Upon realisation, he began to trace, as far back as his childhood, the many other time wasting habits he was susceptible to. After mentally drafting out a more or less complete inventory list of these tarrying activities, he somehow managed to identify the 'progenitor'. It must be the many idle afternoons and lazy mornings he spent staring at the mechanical clock on the wall in his bedroom.
Sometimes he spaced out with a blank stare, and became only aware after; sometimes his thoughts drift untamed, analogously from pointless recollection to restless anticipation and ridiculous imagination. But often, it is just the mere counting of the seconds and minutes gone by following the clock’s ticking.
It was during one of these sessions, as a kid, that he realised the irreversibility of time, experienced an overwhelming sense of devastating ruinousness, and thus, full of pessimism, viewed every moment of his growth, since birth, as decay. Despite the circular movement of the clock hands, made especially obvious by the seemingly disciplined and inexhaustible rotation of the second hand, the clockwise movement indicates temporal linearity, of Time as a one-way street. This experience is, in a way, an antipode to the devastation Nietzsche felt when he realised the notion of eternal recurrence. Perhaps it has to do with his mediocrity, or misunderstanding of the idea, but he could not grasp the apprehension of this German philosopher who eventually gone insane. He does not understand why one would forsake the return of the best moments just because it entails the return of the worst.
Time watching is indeed time wasting, even in other more practical circumstances. Two days ago, when he was early for an important appointment (and being early is a rather unusual experience for him) he checked his watch repeatedly... for the time to come. But yet, how meaningless it is to ease one's anxiety by looking forward to the clock striking the appointment time, when it does not affect the actual situation of the impending arrival. The arrival of the appointment time does not equal the arrival of the person... he thought to himself.
This unproductive pursuit does create a sense of guilt if not stupidity, and one perverse way to lessen this guilt or to console an idiot would be to find others with similar fault or indulgence (although he hardly felt any guilt now). Perhaps this is why he was quite consoled to discover this physically inert activity in the protagonist of a story by Raymond Queneau. A form of consolation similar to the assurance of finding other puzzled faces in class when a rather complex equation were being explained by the math teacher in an arid manner: an assurance of either his average mental capacity or mass stupidity.
About three months ago, he began to realise his self-indulgence in procrastination. Upon realisation, he began to trace, as far back as his childhood, the many other time wasting habits he was susceptible to. After mentally drafting out a more or less complete inventory list of these tarrying activities, he somehow managed to identify the 'progenitor'. It must be the many idle afternoons and lazy mornings he spent staring at the mechanical clock on the wall in his bedroom.
Sometimes he spaced out with a blank stare, and became only aware after; sometimes his thoughts drift untamed, analogously from pointless recollection to restless anticipation and ridiculous imagination. But often, it is just the mere counting of the seconds and minutes gone by following the clock’s ticking.
It was during one of these sessions, as a kid, that he realised the irreversibility of time, experienced an overwhelming sense of devastating ruinousness, and thus, full of pessimism, viewed every moment of his growth, since birth, as decay. Despite the circular movement of the clock hands, made especially obvious by the seemingly disciplined and inexhaustible rotation of the second hand, the clockwise movement indicates temporal linearity, of Time as a one-way street. This experience is, in a way, an antipode to the devastation Nietzsche felt when he realised the notion of eternal recurrence. Perhaps it has to do with his mediocrity, or misunderstanding of the idea, but he could not grasp the apprehension of this German philosopher who eventually gone insane. He does not understand why one would forsake the return of the best moments just because it entails the return of the worst.
Time watching is indeed time wasting, even in other more practical circumstances. Two days ago, when he was early for an important appointment (and being early is a rather unusual experience for him) he checked his watch repeatedly... for the time to come. But yet, how meaningless it is to ease one's anxiety by looking forward to the clock striking the appointment time, when it does not affect the actual situation of the impending arrival. The arrival of the appointment time does not equal the arrival of the person... he thought to himself.
This unproductive pursuit does create a sense of guilt if not stupidity, and one perverse way to lessen this guilt or to console an idiot would be to find others with similar fault or indulgence (although he hardly felt any guilt now). Perhaps this is why he was quite consoled to discover this physically inert activity in the protagonist of a story by Raymond Queneau. A form of consolation similar to the assurance of finding other puzzled faces in class when a rather complex equation were being explained by the math teacher in an arid manner: an assurance of either his average mental capacity or mass stupidity.
…All he had left now was the very vacuity of time. Then he tried to see how time passed, an undertaking just as difficult as that of catching yourself falling asleep. Sitting at his cash desk he would watch the big clock above Meussieu Poucier’s shop, and follow the progress of the big hand. He would manage to see it jump once, twice, three times, and then he suddenly found it was a quarter of an hour later and the big hand had taken advantage of this to move without noticing it. Where had he been all that time? Sometimes he had been back in Madagascar, sometimes he had relived an episode from Flash Guy or Mandrake, his favourite heroes, sometimes he had merely re-eaten a meal or re-seen a film, more or less fragmentarily.
At the end of two months of application, he managed to register three jumps of the big hand, but he never got up to four, not remembering this occupation until much later, being then lost in a fun-jungle, or repeating to himself like a scratched record some conversation he had had with Housette, Virole, or one of his other neighbours. He couldn’t manage to make his mind a blank.
Raymond Queneau, The Sunday of Life (Le Dimanche de la vie), P. 113.
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