Confessional in Sint-Pauluskerk,Antwerp
I wrote the other night of my current state of heightened diplomatic tensions with Time. That state persisted yesterday and today, in the form of a titanic struggle with instruments of time measurement.
Or to put it in layman’s terms (I am, after all, a layman), I had to buy a new alarm clock.
For the last few years I’ve had an alarm clock that pleased me more than any I’ve ever owned. I got it in a special offer from my credit card company. It received a radio signal from the atomic clock in Colorado to keep the time accurate and, as a special bonus, it projected the time on the ceiling in red light (I’ve always loved projection clocks, but have only had a use for them since I got Lasik surgery). But lately that clock has been doing funny things, and I decided to get a new one. I thought finding another atomic/projection clock at Target was probably too much to ask, and of course I was right. I did buy a clock which seemed to suggest it was radio controlled (it wasn’t) and I tried it out last night.
I’d failed to note that it actually had a special feature—a built in Fresnel light, which threw a stark blue blaze over the whole room, inclining me to dreams of being a cornered fugitive, spotlights from cop cars blazing in all the windows, and a voice on a bullhorn yelling, “Come out with your hands up, Baby Face! Nobody has to get hurt!” Continue reading Time travail