Marking Time

Timepieces

            To control time, has been the source of many science fiction stories.  Travel in time, stop time, warp time, it is something many have wanted to do.  Yet the closet to time control has been the clock, watch, hour glass or some other device.  Years ago the pocket watch with its fob was a symbol of distinction.  The retirement watch, a reward for a job complemented.  The year clock for a wedding gift. 

            All are types of time control.  Yet they are futile gestures, for time has its own pace and is influenced by nothing. 

            Time is used to mark events in history, personal or a world class time event.  What year did war happen, when was the plague, what is the date of birth, or what year was the marriage.  Events happen and they are marked as a passage in time.  So that little clock on the wall gives of seconds, minutes and hours.  Then it shifts to the calendar to give us days, weeks, months and years.  Time is always masked in some fashion. 

            That buzzer on the night stand reminds up to get up, it tells us when to leave for an appointment or when somebody is arriving.  There are reminders of anniversaries, celebrations.  The list is endless on how we roll with time and the ways we try to control the machine of time.

            Before the clock, our lives were measured by the sun and the moon.  Traveling was done by the locations of the stars.  Time has been a constant yet it has never really fit into our concepts of time.  We have a leap year to get back on time.  The control of time is not us, but our reaction to it. 

            Doggedly the sun rises, it sets, the moon rises and the sun returns in the morning.  Always there to remind us the ole sol passes overhead. 

            We try to save time by calling it daylight savings.  What time has been saved.  The sun shall rise at its appointed time not when we say it is savings time. 

            Sometimes we are so funny as we put labels on things and expect others to believe in those labels.

            Then there is one most all people enjoy, that Happy Hour when it is beer thirty time. 

That is a how a lot of people dealt with the cold war.