past time

If there's any better thing to do in the middle of winter than cross-country skiing across the oak savanna of the St. Croix river valley, it could only be this.

I always wanted to have or at least for a moment (be) hold a fine timepiece, one of those Swiss or German marvels that marks not only the passage of time but the movement of the sun and moon, and by extension of imagination, all the planets and the entire cosmos, past and future merged seamlessly in a breath's fraction of the present while the eye observes a wonder borne of elements pulled from the earth's veins, a heartbeat of gold and sea shells, of gnarled wood and the cry of the cuckoo, of couples dancing in circles for no reason more than that another hour of our living has passed and we are here, to know it. Gears so tiny and bells so huge, created in devotion, in fervor, in madness. There sat a man, for days and months, peering through a hand-ground lens, piecing together the workings of this machine, carefully placing each hand, each spring, each jewel, to be carried in the hidden pocket of a dress where it would be fondled from time to time, absent-mindedly, by a woman wondering whether or not anyone might notice if she left early... (yawn)

I'm procrastinating.