I felt like evil invisible little work-ethic scruples pulled me out of bed at midnight and to work by my toe-nails. The boxes swirled around me. The buzzer tortured my ears. The belt hitched up somewhere and began a tooth-buzzing metal song. The boxes never stop flowing, and my flesh has been made mechanical, to grab them and move them to other places.
My mouth is dry. I drink. I chase boxes around in circles. It's like the water isn't wet. It runs right through me, and my co-worker looks at me critically as I go to the bathroom again. The noise grinds me away. I pull out a red handkerchief and blow a huge wad of yellow slime into it, and it reminds me of my grandpa. When I talk my voice whines, so I don't.
I found a cold cup of coffee behind a box. I drank it.
One boss gives me more work to do because someone was fired, I think. I can't come in tomorrow, I can't do this again. I was late today, and someone else started my job, and it's hard to continue after someone has started because they set everything up differently . . . and the boxes swirl around me and I run after them trying to get them all put into the right places, but they don't fit.
"It must have spilled." A white-haired female driver is looking for the cold cup of coffee.
"I drank it" I said.
"Your joking. It was cold." She brought me a warm cup of coffee from the machine in the break room.
It's never ending until it ends. . . then I put my beeping scanner away and drove home and slept in my car for awhile because I was too tired to go any further. A neighbor walked past my car and I'm vaguely aware that she saw me dozing while strapped into my seat. My heavy feet carry me home. A passing neighbor made me feel conscious of my slouching.
I need to eat. I'm freezing. I put stuff in the oven and set a timer. I run a bath. I check my computer. My paycheck hasn't hit yet, the bank charged me for being overdrawn last week. A strange man walks past my window.
In the tub, I ate baby potatoes and burritos.
In the tub, I lower my head into the water. I'm surprised to hear knocking, or footsteps, or a hammer. I lift my head out into the silence, and lowered it into the knocking. Silence and knocking. I find my pulse. . swish, knock, pause, repeat, rhythmically, like a clock with a hammer and anvil. One-thousand one, one-thousand two, almost exactly one knock per second . . . wait a second . . . one heartbeat . . .
I imagine a man sitting, listening to his pulse and counting it. . . he counts it because it is his. He counts it because it's comfortingly constant. He sits and counts so long that he sees the shadow of day circle a tree. He sat and counted his heartbeats for so long that he saw the stars circle around him, and the ark of the traveling moon in the night sky. He dedicated his heartbeats to God, using them like a rosary. Ten each for the six things he was most grateful for . . . land one . . . land two . . . land three . . . then water one . . . water two . . . light, air, plants, animals . . . I'm not sure what the six things he counted ten times were. Each cycle of prayer was repeated sixty times to make a cycle of cycles of an hour, and as he watched the shadow circle around his new sundial, he marked the cycle-of cycles of his heart-beat-prayers in the sand. The wind blew his lines away so he laid pebbles in lines instead. He yelled at the grandchildren and dogs when they ran through his time keeper.
"What are you doing grandpa?" a dark-eyed girl asked. "Are you a magician? Why don't you do magic tricks?"
His eyes were unfocused, they had seen too many things. He didn't want to see anymore, or think , so he counted. . . plant two . . . plant three. . . must not loose count . . . plant five . . . "Nothing. . . I'm doing nothing". . .
"They say you count." She said. Loosing count can't be helped, she interrupted his days work. His heartbeat was faster now, and he wasn't sure if he was on light five or seven. He sighed.
"I count" he said. Unconsciously, the count went on within his chest and mind.
"Why?"
"Because . . . I must . . . It makes my fear go away . . . It is my purpose. I must know the time between the heartbeat and the day, the day and the moon. I must know the coarse of God in this. It is my work."
Her eyes registered no interest in this explanation. "I can count." She rapidly began "one-two-three . . . . eleven-twelve-thirteen-"
"I only count to ten" he said. His self-esteem eroded as he confessed this to the girl. If God saw him, he probably viewed him as being as ridiculous as he felt before his granddaughter now.
"Why only ten? Aren't you done?"
"I only have ten fingers." he showed her his hands, palms up. and he twitched them one by one. "Sometimes I only count with my hands. When I finish counting I start over again."
"Why?"
"I spend a lot of time counting. . . measuring whole nights and days of time. Sometimes I'm nearly asleep while I do this."
"There must be an easier way than counting" she said. "I thought you watched the cattle." They both looked at the large beasts grazing below the hill.
"They don't do much" he said.
There must be an easier way than counting. Her words stayed with him long after she ran off to play. He found a large jug and a funnel and sat with them at his sundial. He poured sand in for a cycle of cycles, measuring carefully with his heart-beats. He took the sand that flowed through and poured it again and again. It always took an hour.
The old man taught his friends to keep track of the hours this way, but each man threw sand out of the jug so that his shift of night watch would be shorter. A glass blower built a funnel that was less prone to tampering, especially when rigged with a bell that jingled when the funnel was turned.
Clocks emerged from the primordial counting.
A man sits in a room full of clocks because he likes the ticks. He is profoundly aware of every second and the moments in between, and looses himself in the hours.
The bath water is cold. It's nearly one in the afternoon before I climb into bed.
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