8:45:52
8:45:53
8:45:54
8:45:55
8:45:56
8:45:57
8:45:58
8:45:59
8:45:00
8:45:01....

The clock is stuck. The one in the bathroom. It's 8:45 forever. The second hand keeps moving, but the minutes don't. You can reset it, but the moment that minute hand gets back to 8:45... time stops again.

Usually the ticking of clocks doesn't bother me. Not at all... it's a healthy sound. The sound of seconds passing. It's a reminder to make use of each moment and not let a single second slip away. But as I stood in front of the sink, the still morning buzz around me, I listened.

tick.
tick.
tick.
tick.
tick....

...and it was 8:45 again. Nothing happened. As it happened, no time had passed. It was a sickening sound, a sound of dread. It was the sound of the constant repetition of a lack of accomplishment. If we take dull in it's most vulgar sense, that's what that sound was.

I snapped out of the trance, finished my morning routine by 8:45 and headed downstairs. I poured myself a cup of coffee, checked on the more accurate time of 7:20 on the coffee pot digital clock. I stopped to read for a moment as I whisked a little packed of ballot copies off the counter and into the bag of books on my shoulder.

I want upstairs to turn off the lights and grab my keys. As I reached into the bathroom for the lightswitch, I heard it. Tick. Tick. Tick. Curious, I checked. 8:45:23.

I smiled.


My day continued. The announcer on the radio said 8:10 as I pulled into Starbucks. At 12:40 the lady at the McDonald's window wished me a good afternoon. By 3:56 I was settled down for my four o'clock class. At 6:53 my class ended seven minutes late. My mom asked how my day was as I headed downstairs.

Pretty good.

And all I meant was that the day was normal, which isn't bad at all. Just the same regrets, the same pleasures, the same pains and the same quirks as every other day. The same emotions, both devastating and completely enrapturous. The same places and the same people and the same politics of every day life.

At 11:26 I was blogging about a clock that was stuck in the bathroom. From here I can hear the tick of an endlessly pointless cycle. A shockingly good sci-fi film is fresh in my mind. The clock must mean something.

Of course it does.

It means that the clock's mechanisms finally gave out. That final push of the minute hand from 8:45 to 8:46 just isn't strong enough. It's stuck. The second hand goes around. That's normal. It passes the same numbers as it travels consistently in it's arc. The sound is the same. The same tick that seems so healthy. You could say the second hand is behaving normally.

You could say my day was normal.

The clock is functional to time a 30 second race. It's perfectly fine two times a day. It's ticking is perfectly regulated. But it's stuck, always on the same minute.

My mind's stuck, always on the same thought.

I can hear it ticking from here, missing it's chance to move forward a minute. And from here, I'm missing you, but more importantly, missing my chance to move on without you.

When I hit the "Publish Button" in less than a minute, I'm going to get out of my chair, put my laptop on the desk and walk into the bathroom. I'm going to take that clock off the wall and put it on the counter where it doesn't have to defeat gravity to move on.

At 8:46:01 I'll move on. Between now and then, my heart will be as broken as you left it after this normal day. At 8:46:01 I won't have to defeat your memory to live my life.

But until I finish this post, it's 8:45. And that's not good enough for someone who's willing to change at 11:37.