Ah, it never ends.

The room ought to be silent, this time of day…………no one is home, and the windows are opened to a breeze too gentle and passing to do more than fill the quiet atmosphere with a whispery suggestion of sound. Curtains in the wind. Dust motes in the air. But words fall into the stillness like smooth black pebbles into deep water. Each one is weighted with a thick, resentful sort of melancholy.

You’d think they would learn. No matter what they do or where they go, time after time, it always happens again. They’re so fickle – do they really think all their noble resolutions are going to change anything?

“Pessimistic today, are we?”

Today, tomorrow, the day after………..what is there to be optimistic about, really? None of this half-empty, half-full nonsense for me. The cup is broken, and lies leaking slowly on the floor.

“Mind if I ask why?”

Oh, the usual. The hopelessness of existence, the maddening compulsion to watch while the world goes to hell, the damned MEANINGLESSNESS of life…………………and yet, days march on. On, and on, and they all just keep on living their lives, making the same mistakes, breaking the same promises, asking the same unanswerable questions. What drives them, I ask myself as every new day rolls around with its burning sun and its empty possibilities? What causes them to keep on trying to fill each new day, when the whole of history must surely warn them that there is no way to keep from falling behind and failing? They must know that death will come, and that they will do nothing in their miserable lives but look back on moments they wish they had held on to tighter when they had the chance. They must know.

“Maybe they do……………maybe they don’t. Would you want them to stop trying altogether?”

Stop trying? Stop expending all that energy over and over again, on things that won’t last and didn’t matter in the first place? Stop telling those stupid jokes about newspapers and alarm clocks and bartenders, as if the brief hiccups of laughter will solve any of their problems? Stop wasting so much time on people and things that will eventually prove themselves not to be worth a moment’s attention? Of course I would! It’s damned depressing, watching out these windows and wondering when – and how - they will realize how pointless it all really is.

“Well, if you put it that way.”

I do.

“All I know is, I can look out at them all as they go about their business every day, and yes, there is a shameful amount of waste and foolishness out there. But for every throwaway chance, there are always six more taken that mean something. Sometimes they fail. Oftentimes, actually, they fail. But they still take the chance.”

A sullen pause, but one in which thought can be felt. The edge of the curtain drifts silently across the window, drawing a sheer line of shadow across the bright patches on the floor. Only for a second, and then it is gone.

Your point?

“Point? Oh, I don’t have one. Someone like me, I’m lucky to have two thoughts in my head at the same time that don’t have to do with worms or the next flight south. I wasn’t going anywhere particular with it. Just seems a shame, to see you all wrapped up in knots over the big picture, always worrying about what’s wrong with the world, when you could just keep on ticking away, marking off every moment for the moment’s sake. Just like them. Just like the days. Just like life.”

A rustle of feathers. The dew of nighttime is beginning to steam upwards in the warmth of the sun, and the wide bright earth is calling.

“Anyways, I’m off. The worms in the garden are starting to show.”

The raven’s shadow flits off the windowsill in a flurry of wings, and now the old, stopped clock is all alone in the room.

Young upstart, It finally grumbles to itself.

But inside of it, a strange thing is happening. Old gears are creaking, beginning to turn. Cogs begin to move. Wheels begin to spin. The muffling glaze of silence on the room is broken, suddenly, as a long-dead sound echoes into the warm golden spaces of the early morning. And the sorrow of the words that are not words vanishes in the wake of a real, true sound.

Tick, tock. Says the clock.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.


Time, as always, marches on.


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