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Odds are good
that you don’t think much about this, and you probably shouldn’t
-- there are plenty of better things to do -- but if you find yourself looking
for something to contemplate in an empty hour, you might consider that a
broken clock isn’t just right twice a day: it’s absolutely,
completely, on-the-money right twice a day. Say what you will about
our broken clock, about how all it does is show three o’clock all day
long; at three o’clock in the afternoon when the sun is high and again
twelve hours later when the dew is forming on the lawn, our clock is as
right as any other clock. In some ways it’s better than any clock,
because the twice-daily arrival of its randomly selected hour is, for the
clock and its watchers, a real occasion. The clock does not mindlessly tick
off the passage of time: twelve long hours move slowly but unwaveringly
toward that time which the clock had been smugly predicting all day. Time
can no more avoid meeting our clock’s demands than the sun can refuse
to rise.
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