Bung and Time

I have not worn a watch in years, in almost 5 years. And many curious souls have questioned me about it. With a simple shrug, my instinctive answer would be that I do not like to be tied down by or tied to anything; not a watch; not a chain; not a ring.

But it was not always so, there was a point of time which I did not mind....

I suppose it started since my army days, when a simple pager frames the chronological vacuum and fills the position of a watch. Most would know that my pager runs 47 minutes ahead of the institutionalized, international, codified time. That strange number was required to as doing mental sums in the morning to determine the correct time helps tremendously to shake the sands of slumber out of my eyes.

But there was a time which I wore a watch. A watch that was meant to tell me someone else's time, and for me to adhere to. It did not really work out. It just made my famous lack of punctuality relatively more pronounced and less forgivable since I wear an objective measure on my wrist.

At that point, I worked, lived and played as I used to.

And there was a time which I wore a simple ring. A gift from the same person who gave me the watch. It was a simple exchange; my heart for a ring. My hand held a ring when it can no longer hold still my heart. In the transaction, questions of fairness or relative worth seemed distant, the heart had to be set free. It just seemed so much easier holding onto a band that weighed a thousand tons then...

I have since took off the watch and I have since took off the ring. I have once again returned to my unordered life in the chronological vacuum, to the anarchy and familiar chaos which was characteristic of the normality which I have gotten used to since my early years of existence.

Everything was back to what it was, or kind of.

For my hand remains empty...