Comments on: Time Piece

By: patry Francis

patry Francis — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:42:17 +0000

My mother has one of those clocks, too–probably purchased around the same time. I remember the day my parents bought it at a jeweler’s and how proud they were of it. The chimes, dispassionate and poignant at the same time, are such an enduring sound. Just hearing them brings back my childhood home
so vividly–the darkness of the upstairs hallway, a certain loneliness you sometimes feel growing up. Thanks for writing about the clock in your life and bringing that all back.

By: Sara

Sara — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:05:56 +0000

Ah, very nice. I do love the personal stories, I do, I do! Especially when they’re as nicely written as this one.

By: beth

beth — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:26:59 +0000

My own father has taken up clock-repairing as a hobby, and people now bring him clocks to see if he can fix them. It’s a perfect hobby for him, since he is very good with mechanical tinkering, and has a lot of patience as well as wood- and metal-working expertise. But what gets to him is the way each clock has a story, which the owner nearly always tells him along the path to the repair. Most of them are quite poignant – explaining, probably, why these particular clocks have been kept rather than discarded, even though they haven’t run for years. The gratitude of the owners when the clock comes back, running, also says something about what the clock has come to represent in their lives. I wonder – do other objects carry this symbolism with them quite the way a clock does? Is it the kinship of the heartbeat and the ticking that creates the subliminal and powerful connection to a particular person?

By: dale

dale — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:09:22 +0000

I love this meditation on inheritance, just “taking it to bits,” as the English say, and leaving it open to the daylight. Thank you.