Time and Again

- It's eleven-o-nine.
The green cheap plastic Citizen on the wall says so. My cute
see-through Swatch says so. My Nokia 3210 says so. Little more than a
clock now, now that it does not ring.

- It's eleven-fifteen.
I raise my left wrist to my left ear. All the better to hear the
ticking. I listen to it for a while at least. I remove my hand and
replace it on my lap, clasped with its counterpart.

- It's eleven-thirty-three.
I let my hearing fall inwards to listen to the clocks ticking inside
me. I am aware again of the relative nature of time, its subjectivity.
It scares me. My biological clock (my world clock) is synchronised with
absolute time. I can and do almost constantly count off the seconds
with it. My reproductive clock has long since stopped its ticking. It
clangs, angrily, incessantly. My life clock, now that's the one, why
does it tick so fast? It has for as long as I can remember...

- It's eleven-forty-two.
Some people rail against death; it is not their time. Their life
clocks, their chronovitae as it were, count down too slowly. When the
end comes the soul is not willing. It howls. I pity them.

- It's eleven-fifty-three.
Some people, I know, give up before the body is ready. Like me their
life clocks were wound too tightly. They clatter along regardless. The
will to live just... dissipates, the body a soulless puppet, death is
the only mercy. I pity us.

- It's eleven-fifty-seven.
As for the rest, those in tune, how I hate them, body and soul
marching to the universal beat in lock-step. True they are chained, but
they are content, centred. I hate them and that is why I kill them time
and again.

- It's midnight and my night has only just begun.