The Time

At a family picnic, I was talking to my aunt and I told her that I was thinking about getting a big clock face tattooed in the middle of my back.  I told her that there was a special ink that they could use for the hands so that they could be set for the right time and then they would move and tick along like a normal clock.  The hands could only be set once, and the setting would be as permanent as the tattoo itself, but once set right, the clock would always keep accurate time.  It would never lose a second here or there over the years.  And I would always know what time it was, because I would be able to feel it on my back.  If I was working with someone and they said, "Man, it sure feels like it should be noon already," I could just stand up straight, arch my back to get a sense of the position of the hands, and say, "Nope.  It feels exactly like it's quarter to ten."

My aunt responded to this with a wry smile and a roll of her eyes.  She pointed out that there were some cases where you might not always want to know the time.  I had to admit that that was true.  Sometimes, on a long shift, the worst thing you could do was to keep looking at the clock.  The minutes would just crawl by.  Other times you just wanted to stay in a moment, not caring when and if it would ever end.  I thought about having that clock on my back, feeling every minute portioned out equally, every moment of my life punctuated with that slow inky tick.  I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling like there was an itch I couldn't reach.     

Getting Together

My mother was having everyone in the family over to her apartment for Christmas Eve.  My wife and I were riding over with my old girlfriend and her boyfriend.  We were all close friends.  On the way we stopped off at a gas station for a case of beer.  There was tinsel and lights strung up around the door and the clerk sat behind the lonely counter watching some televised Christmas pageant on a little portable TV, while the snow fell in thick wet flakes all around.  My wife and I sat in the back seat of the car as we headed back out through the slushy streets.  The boyfriend drove, silent and serious, trying to peer through the headlights past the falling snow.  The old girlfriend was in the passenger seat and she turned back to us and laughed and snorted about some nickname I used to call her.  I blushed.  But everything was fine.  We were all together.

We pulled up outside my mother's apartment complex.  We got out and stood around in the dim, yellowed lights and the falling snow, and the boyfriend said something about having to check the rear brakes on his car before we went in.  I was about to get into a whole conversation with him about bleeding his brake lines, when I noticed that my old girlfriend was already starting down the walk towards my mother's building.  She didn't feel like standing around and waiting for the rest of us.  I wondered what my mother would think, having my old girlfriend show up on her doorstep, by herself and without any explanation.  She had never liked the girl.  She certainly wouldn't start liking her now.

But when the rest of us got up to my mother's apartment, we found my old girlfriend sitting in the corner of the living room in a plush chair beside the Christmas tree, sipping a cup of coffee.  My mother had welcomed her warmly into her home, and she came and took the rest of our coats and we all settled in on the couches.  There were carols playing on the radio and the tree flashed its scattered patterns of colored light.  I got up and went to put the case of beer in the refrigerator.  When I got back, the rest of the family had arrived, and everyone was packed into the small warm room.  I saw that the chair in the corner was empty.  I looked around.  My old girlfriend had slipped out and she was gone.  I knew I'd never see her again, and I knew it had to be that way.  I sat down on the arm of the couch and watched as the kids crawled around under the tree looking for their presents.      

A Close Shave

I was in the locker room of this shop where I worked, getting changed into my uniform before my shift.  I was about to head out to work with the rest of the crew, when I heard a sharp grunt of anger somewhere behind me.  The locker room was filled with clouds of steam from the showers, but I made my way through the steam until I came upon one of my co-workers holding a pair of electric clippers in one hand and brushing his other hand across a spot just above his ear.  I looked close and I could see that he had nicked himself with the clippers and taken out a big chunk of hair above his ear.  I told him that the only thing he could really do to fix it was to shave the rest of his head.

He made a hard frown and a curse, but he acknowledged what I said and he headed over to one of the mirrors above the sinks on the other side of the locker room.  But things got confused in the cloud of steam and suddenly it was me holding the clippers and walking towards the mirror.  It was me that had to shave my head now.  The steam had fogged up the mirror.  I tried to clear the fog away with my hand, smoothing out a clear circle in the middle of the mirror, but as soon as I had that hole cleared and I tried to see myself so that I could shave my head, the mirror would just instantly fog over again.  I tried to just shave my head without being able to see what I was doing, plowing long even strips up one side and then the other.  But when I pulled the clippers away and felt my head to see if I'd gotten everything, I would always feel thick patches of hair that I had missed.  I would never be able to do this without being able to see myself.

There was a room upstairs above the shop, where I thought I might find a mirror and maybe a little pair of scissors to get a closer trim.  The room was a brightly lit bedroom with a low ceiling and a big four posted bed with thick, darkly laquered, wooden posts. There was a matching wooden dresser across the room.  It sat beneath the front window which looked out on the grey day outside and the quiet residential street below.  I rifled through the drawers of the dresser, trying to find the mirror and the scissors, but there was nothing but old bracelets and earings and little plastic figurines and loose red and white dice misplaced from some board games.  

I finally found a little pair of nail trimming scissors in one of the bottom drawers, but still no mirror.  I looked out the window and I saw someone in a heavy winter coat passing on the sidewalk below.  I could ask them!  They could trim my hair.  They could see what they were doing.  I fumbled with the latch on the window, trying to get it open so that I could call down to the person on the sidewalk and ask for their help before they slipped away.

Total Eclipse

It was a nice, spring evening, and I was driving eastward through town when I noticed the clouds begin to clear in the sky ahead.  As the clouds drew back, I could see that there were stars behind them.  It was still too early for the stars to be out, and I knew immediately that this had to mean that there was a solar eclipse taking place in the sky behind me.  I began to panic.  I was afraid that I would be irresistibly drawn to look at the eclipse and that I would end up damaging my eyes.  I pulled into the parking lot of the local library.  I kept my head down as I got out of the car, but I couldn't resist making a quick sidelong glance at the sun.  I only got a glimpse.  I saw the massive dark disk slowly sliding into position.  I saw the huge interlocking mechanisms of nature momentarily exposed beyond the limit of what human eyes can bear.  I kept my head down and went looking for shelter.

I went inside the library.  There was a reading room in the basement, and there were other people taking shelter there. It was quiet and still and everyone was hunched down as though holding their breath and waiting, their eyes all raised towards the ceiling, trying to stay perfectly still until this terrifying alignment of celestial bodies had run its course in the world above.  A number of people had even piled into a closet.  They were all crammed in there with hardly room to move or breathe.  One of them, a small child with a smudged face, stared into my eyes, shaking and trembling.  The sight of them all cowering in the closet made me reconsider my fears.  I had never seen an eclipse, and I might never see one again.  As long as I didn't look directly at the sun, I'd be alright.

I decided to go back out.  I climbed the stairs, back up to the main doors of the library, eager to get back outside.  But when I opened the doors, there was just a huge grey gust of wind sweeping past.  I stepped out and found the sky completely clouded over and darkened and grey.  There were a few inches of snow on the ground and there was thick snow swirling in the air.  The bright spring evening had been swept aside by the eclipse.  The sun and the moon were out there beyond the clouds, conspiring to leave us in the dark and the bitter cold.

Resting in the Fields

I was living out of an old van.  Most of the time I kept it parked in an open wheat field, and in the evenings I would sit with the doors open and let the breeze blow through as I listened to my programs on a little TV that I had set up on some wooden crates.  I had to listen to the shows instead of watching them because the picture tube was blown out on the TV.  Somehow it was better that way.  There was a drama that was set in a hospital that I especially liked.  I would sit back with my eyes half closed, seeing the scenes in my head and getting a glimpse between my fluttering eyelids of the golden waves of evening light rustling out there in the wheat with each passing breeze.  My friend would come by sometimes with a few cans of food to cook over the fire after the sun went down, and he would find me there in the back of the van, smiling and about to doze off.