Does anybody know what time it is?

I had good intentions towards this journal when the year began, I really did. Obviously not such good intentions that I would abandon it for the first third of the year. Light decided to make some half-ass attempt at shouldering through my curtains, failed and curled around the rooftops to the east.

This is the kind of morning that bugged me when I was kid; it’s either bring a jacket then forget you brought one when the bell rang Sunny Afternoon. Or freeze your ass off on the morning walk. It took years for the present and the past to overlap; I seem incapable of multi-tasking across the yawn of time.

I’ve been thinking about time a lot lately, not in the quickening pace towards the grave kind of time, though that’s never far from the notion of time, but the keeping of time as an art form. watches, swiss made automatics. Sure, your dollar store digital with the band made out of dildo jelly, keeps time well, maybe even better, certainly more accurately. It’s artless though and for that kind of time my cell works even better, setting to the nearest Atomic clock (I want to say Colorado) Losing like a second every century or so. Even so, that kind of time is … not as real as all that. That kind of time is invented by us, so we aren’t late for the bus, for work, for a date. Sure, there is an empirical base for it, but it’s still an invention, even on this little back forty of the universes there are things like glaciers and trees and sturgeon who aren’t bound by the rotation of the earth or the position of the sun to measure time.

Oh, shit. Swiss automatic watches. It’s odd to think of how long they’ve been around (in theory since somewhere around 1650, though not really in consumer production until much later). These machines have a heartbeat. When set into motion a very small pendulum swings in a precise and arrhythmic arc, or a steady one. It’s not the pendulum consistency that drives the seconds through inanimate gears, it’s the storing of kinetic energy, inside the cold steel contrivances and spits it through the machine in what we consider precise time. I think the older automatics were rhythmic like a metronome or grandfather clock, and probably only rocked in one direction. I don’t know.

It is 2019 and no one needs a watch for directions (your phone has GPS) Time (your phone is set through wi-fi or blue-tooth to that same atomic clock) for pilots or sea pirates. It is the beauty of it. Places that sell from multiple categories (like sears or Walmart for instance) lump watches in with jewelry. And that’s what they are. Some people wear a Rolex to show how successful and professional they are (still, that dollar store digital or your phone keeps more accurate time) Some wear, say, a Lucien Picard because of the varieties of skeletons, or hearts, or complications, to make themselves look scientific or a juvenile sense of style. Some just like looking down at their wrists and seeing something beautiful there, or elegant or enigmatic (all three are in any good watchmakers’ repertoire.).

I like to think I’m in the latter group, I’m certainly not in the first (though, heh, I have a really nice Rolex replica, and a skeleton watch or two). There is another group altogether that is hardly exclusive to watches; I’m a compulsive collector. Watch’s, like pipes, if you’re compulsive in collecting, retain value when you tuck them away and go play with something else, automatics don’t run down the spring (self-wind movement) or the battery (quartz). I’ve only sold pipes to cul the large collection. A higher end pipe is not bought because it smokes better (I don’t know the current market, but it used to be a 100 dollar pipe ad a five hundred dollar pipe would smoke the same, sometimes the 100 dollar one would smoke better, the high end pipe is bought for all the same reason one buys a watch; the art, the bragging rights, some aesthetic you like. The big difference being no one makes that little fake cough at your watch.

Maybe I’ll post pictures once I remember how to get into my photo bucket account. My two favorites for aesthetics are my blue dial Armand Nicolet, elegant, and refined with a blue starburst on dial that catches the light. You wouldn’t think a blue face and blue leather band would look so elegant — yeah, shit, I might have to argue with photo bucket. The other is a Frederique Constant, elegant grey dials, classic features and an e-strap I have yet to set up (the band has a small chip so one can use it as a limited fitness tracker.

I have a Raymond Weil that is very comfortable to wear and a Revue Thomann that is comfortable. This all started with a two-month subscription to watch gang. I would look up the watches once I received them to see what the actual retail was on them. I realized that though watch gang is a good service that I could get better watches for less money and get to pick them instead of being surprised. Also watch gang sent me the current thing in men’s watches; huge dials; unless I wanted to play wonder woman, carrying that much metal on my arm is not really my style. You kind of get to build your profile but not with features; they show you pictures of watches and you yay or nay them.

Though collecting things is a bad habit for me, watches are so damn cool, functional art.