The above picture is of the new clock at Corpus Christi college in Cambridge. I quote a new’s report to explain the clock a little:
“The masterpiece, introduced by famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, challenges all preconceptions about telling time. It has no hands or digital numbers and it is specially designed to run in erratic fashion, slowing down and speeding up from time to time.
Inventor John Taylor used his own money to build the clock as a tribute to John Harrison, the Englishman who in 1725 invented the grasshopper escapement, a mechanical device that helps regulate a clock’s movement.
Making a visual pun on the grasshopper image, Taylor created a demonic version of the insect to top the gold-plated clock where it devours time.”
The clock was “opened” in September but I’ve not been to Cambridge since the summer.
I rather liked this clock because I couldn’t tell the time! Time ticks away and I end up feeling guilty because of the amount of it I seem to waste, just doing nothing, watching the sky, watching the flowers grow, listening to silence and the birds. Each day passes and I chide myself that I have done nothing. And then I get angry with myself for that chiding.
Time is a concept that is a modern one. Early man divided the year into seasons, and that was enough. Now we divide it into milliseconds and even that is not enough.
I want to step out of time and stop worrying: worrying about whether I am doing enough. I want to allow myself to be idle and lazy and not be angry with myself.
You see, the greatest ideas and thoughts in my life have emerged in the still moments between frenetic activity, and if I don’t slow down and cherish those idle moments, the inspirations will vanish without me ever seeing them and understanding them.
“Slow down, you move too fast, you gotta make the morning last”, is a great mantra, and I’m going to try and make it MY mantra today. What about you?
Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking 