Marking Time

               A few months ago, I pulled a rock out of the mud in a clear pool near the banks of the Winisk, where it lets into Hudson Bay. As soon as I did, I felt some funny kind of shame I couldn’t describe or justify. I put it back as faithfully as I could, smoothed the mud back over it, and watched the turbid water clear. Since then, the thought of it has persisted like a sort of memetic infection – loudest in what would have been quiet moments.

               I felt it again, more acutely this time. I had been rummaging for a AA battery, cracking open drawers that hadn’t had light let into them for months, and each relic they contained had a sort of dull heat radiating from it. At first, just like before, I couldn’t say what it was that bothered me. I just felt generally repulsed. And closing the drawers didn’t help; I had let something out. Working my way down the row, I came to the drawer with the watch in it.

               It was an old Casio with a black plastic band and a black face with radon-green hands, still ticking. It was white hot.

               I closed the drawer, I closed my eyes, but an afterimage persisted, still ticking. Existential heat – that’s what it was; I’d been burned. For the last however-long, I’d gone about my days and the watch had been there, marking time, its hours as long as mine. My ignorance of the hugeness of its being was gone and would never come back. I thought about taking its battery out, or just smashing it with a hammer, but in the end, I decided to put it on. It’s just a watch now, and the hours it marks are mine.

               But there’s still a rock in the mud near the banks of the Winisk, where it lets into Hudson Bay, and its hours are its own, and just as long.