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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