Watches

Time present. Time past. Time future.

         Time. It rules our lives. Got to get here. Got to get there. Be on time. There is a never enough time to do the things we want and need to do. Is there a way to get more of it? Get up earlier? Go to bed later? Organize ones time better?

          Stuck in a traffic jam, you are sweating late… your tension level is maxing out, then you glance down at your TimelinE watch and you can’t help but laugh. Yes, you are wearing a watch but it does not tell you the time in a chronological sense. It is asking you take a time out; take a deep breath; to think about what’s the big hurry.

The Timeless Void

          To figure out the cause of my debilitating headaches that seared as if a red- hot poker had been stabbed down the base of my skull, I had tests and more tests — MRI, CT Scan. I’d checked off the list of home and folk remedies, but nothing would alleviate. Kaiser finally sent me to a psychologist to see if the problem was just in my head. The doctor and I talked and talked, trying to find some event that might have triggered the pain but nothing added up to the cause. He eventually thought that hypnosis might help to overcome my anxiety and stress. Along with the headaches, I was a frantic mess because there was too much to do and not enough time.

          He did not give the suggestion that I could now perform complex tap dance routines or cluck like a chicken. Once he had induced the hypnotic trance, the doctor asked me to envision a huge clock whose face was expanding in all directions. It was Daliesque with the edges of the clock dripping, melting over the edge of the horizon. It continued to stretch out to a far far away and when it could go no further it snapped and at once there was total blackness. No clocks. No stars. No nothing.

          What was I experiencing? Infinity? There were no images, no beginning, no end. Just time beyond all dimension. I was floating in a quivering blackness in what seemed to be an eternity; in what I had heard described as the “timeless void.” As the doctor gently brought me out of the trance, he cautioned that I should, in the next few days, be very careful. He could see that I had gone into some place deep and far away.

          As I awoke to this new reality, my sense of time was distorted, askew. Clocks didn’t jive. The next day, while walking down the ward to teach my class at the Yountville Veteran’s Home, the clock on one wall said 2:45 while the clock on the opposite wall at 2:49 was near but not exactly. Several students were wearing watches so I asked them what time it was. A minute this way or that, but no two people had the same time. It affirmed my revelation that time was/is a consensus reality; an agreed upon construct. Class begins at 2:45 so everyone always shows up then.

          Before I could even begin my lecture, in a flash, I was thunderstruck as proverbs (time flies, time heals) and measures (make and take, keep and spend) came to mind. As fast as I could, on a scrap of paper I jotted down the ideas and scribbled sketches. After class, I realized that I had to make these as metaphorical watches, that would instead of telling the time, would serve as reminders of the timeless void and the infinity of space/time.

          As an inveterate thrift-store shopper, my first thought was to repurpose used watches replacing the inner workings with my own diminutive paintings and sculptures. However, sourcing enough used ones was problematic. Fortunately, I was able to find a watch casings and band distributor in New York City who was willing to sell parts wholesale to a small time dealer like me.

          Inside the empty watch casing, contemporary rubble was paired with prehistoric fossils. Bits and pieces of detritus were marshaled into use. A piece of window screen became The Web of Illusion. A thicket of garden netting became the timeless void. A mouse skull, picked from the regurgitated remains of an owl pellet, inspired the Georgia O’Keeffe Watch. A doll hand smashed through the watch cover was Out of Time. Sartre was done proud with Being and Nothingness and the glass eyeball on Watch Watch is doing just that.

         

Web of Illusion

         Each titled, signed, and dated watch was presented in a special box along with a label that described the philosophical intention of these meditative devices. They were featured in galleries in Napa, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. With articles in Glamour, SideStreet, The Chicago Tribune, I was busier than ever.

          Did the hypnosis solve my anxiety or cure the headaches? Did the making of timeless timepieces ease my fret about time? No, not really. Making and then marketing the watches, added yet another thing to do in an already jam-packed life. But as a timeless interpretation of immeasurable metaphor the last question a TimelinE watch would ever answer, do you have enough?

Watch Watch

UPDATE July 12, 2019

Going through old files I discovered this story, my first telling in 1986 

about how TimelinE came into being: