Did they keep to one constant dress, they would sometimes be in the fashion, which they never are as matters are managed at present. If instead of running after the mode, they would continue fixed in one certain habit, the mode would some time or other overtake them, as a clock that stands still is sure to point right once in twelve hours: in this case therefore I would advise them, as a Gentleman did his friend who was hunting about the whole town after a rambling fellow, If you follow him you will never find him, but if you plant your self at the corner of any one street, I’ll engage it will not be long before you see him.

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, 1711

This season of the year I always have to remind myself not to wish time away. The grey-upon-grey-upon-greyness of bitter February days can make a person feel very heavy, and it’s not strange to long for spring days when everything comes back to life, or sweet summer days when we can leave our doors and windows open and we feel a little lighter in our hearts and in our steps. But time is merciless. Wishing it to go faster is foolish on so many levels. It’s running and passing, and we can’t get it back when it’s gone, we can’t relive those moments. We can’t wish this away. Everything is changing at its own strange pace, and we can’t stop that, we wouldn’t want to stop that. We have to let everything change, but we can pay attention as it does.

Recently we temporarily acquired a clock. We’re only keeping it until it finds its permanent home. We’re fostering it, if you will. I’m not sure how old it is or what kind of clock it is, officially, but it hangs on a wall and has a pendulum. It says its tick tock tick tock in such a lovely sweet warm voice that you almost don’t mind it reminding you that all of these moments, every moment, is passing, is already gone.

It is a broken clock. And for that I feel such affection for it. Not out of pity, but entirely out of respect. It plays the old familiar tune, the old Westminster chime, but it plays it in its own way, at its own pace. It makes its own kind of music. It might play the notes out of order. It might not play all the notes. It might repeat one pattern, play another upside down, and leave another out altogether. It plays the song slowly, sometimes very slowly, with a sweet speaking silence between each note. A hanging hush. If you’re in a February mood, this will stop you in your tracks, to wait for the next note to fall, to think about time passing. It’s a perfect poem about the off-kilter strangeness with which time moves.

Sometimes it chimes the hour. Sometimes it chimes once or twice, when you least expect it, with a sort of stubborn refusal to go further, and an insistence that this is exactly how many times you need to hear this note. Usually, it doesn’t chime at all. Every once in a while, out of nowhere, it will chime over and over and over and over again. It will chime forty or fifty times, it will chime until you lose count. And then you feel that it is trying to tell you something. That you are being stupid not to understand. It is insistent and urgent but in such a calm and measured way. And after that, it often grows very tired and stops altogether. Until we start it again, whether it wants us to or not.

And when we get it fixed it might tell us the correct time and chime the right hours. But how can there be a correct time when time passes so differently for different people, so differently at different times of day and different seasons of the year?

On a walk on the towpath on a day dreary with a cold sleety rain, I realized that winter reveals things to us. We see in the bare tangled branches all of the abandoned nests — of bird or wasp or squirrel. How well they are made, what a beginning of life they have witnessed. The moss on the trees and on the brick walls is as green as it will ever be. Vibrant. Verdant. On a hot dry summer day it won’t be this green, and the rest of the world — the leaves and vines — will be so green around it you won’t notice it. Even the pale papery-fine heads of dried weedy flowers are so beautiful. But will we notice them when the summer flowers start to bloom? No, and likely they will be gone to make way for new life. Be thankful for the warm ringing chimes, whenever they may sound at their own erratic pace, and for the spaces between them. And when you’re trying to keep track of time, that rambling fellow, if you follow him you will never find him, but if you plant yourself at the corner of any one street, I’ll engage it will not be long before you see him.

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