1999 january 18

minutes

i had one of those weekends where the abstract and elastic nature of time kept hitting me upside the head

i became rather obsessed about single minutes, what i could and could not accomplish within their confines. whilst cooking dinner saturday night those minutes were crammed full and precious. when i had to let something blanch for one minute and no longer while also stirring this and basting that and sauteeing the other, well, that one minute was not nearly long enough.

on the other hand, sunday morning i put my coffee cup in the microwave to reheat for one minute and in that 60 seconds i opened the refrigerator, got out the cream, got out the bowl of raspberry jello, found the beaters and the mixer, assembled them into a unit and plugged it in, found a bowl and poured in the cream and sugar, put the cream back in the fridge, snitched a piece of turkey out of a ziplock bag, inspected a bag of cheese looking for signs of mold and then shut the fridge just as the timer on the microwave dinged.

it's all relative, isn't it.

periodically, i go through phases during which i am fanatical about wearing watches; i'll not only strap one on my right wrist, but also onto the buckle of my backpack and another to the drawstring of my purse. i check the things constantly, making sure they are in synch and still running. these phases were far more frequent when i was riding a bus everywhere and knowing the time in order to catch one, and avoid waiting ninety minutes for the next, was crucial. it would usually last for a month or so, or until one of them stopped running.

i have a huge collection of perfectly good watches in need of batteries, sitting prettily in a wicker basket.

a few years ago, my father visited on his way to a conference in washington, dc. while i was at work one friday, he took as many of these dead watches as he could find and had new batteries put in them. it was a wonderful gesture and allowed me to indulge my time fetish for quite a while, until they all stopped during the same month.

i haven't worn a watch since. this christmas, my mother and father sent me a new one and when i opened it, i immediately noticed it wasn't ticking. the battery was dead. i figure they decided to just skip the stage where it would be strapped to a bag and sent it to join the others in the basket. they get lonely these days.

of course, all these little anecdotes about minutes passing and watches dying and my obsession with telling the time are but ways to try and distract me from the real time issue. two words: biological clock.

time is tic tic ticking, claire