The keyboard clacks and clicks,
The clock now tocks and ticks,
As time goes by,
The words do fly,
Little shapes like sticks.
**
The music beats and swells,
Containing sounds of bells,
The speakers thrum,
The voice does hum,
Like echos in a well.
**
The night is damp and dark,
Loud voices in the park,
Dreams are rare,
When sleep is spare,
But wish they could embark.
**
The days are long and slow,
But weeks, they seem to flow,
Confusion reigns,
The body strains,
And missing is the glow.
Jasmine lay on her back with her head turned to one side, looking at the big red numbers of the electronic alarm clock. 6:57AM. She turned her head the other way, her eyes falling on the back of Jordan’s head. He lay beside her, on his stomach, just barely snoring as he slept. One of his arms was tucked close to his side while the other was flung out casually, resting on Jasmine’s stomach above the thin blankets that covered them both. Three more minutes, Jasmine knew, and the alarm would ring.
She shifted her eyes back to the clock and then to the bare ceiling above, slightly stained from that leak that Jordan had discovered last year but had done nothing about. She pondered the stain for a moment, thinking again how much Jordan needed her when it came to stupid things like taking care of his rented flat, before another image came to her mind and made the stain blur as her eyes lost focus. The image was of a large, rectangular room. In one corner, next to one small window, was her bed. Two more beds and two desks separated it from her desk, by the corner next to the door. She then thought of her roommates – one whom she liked a great deal and another whom she pitied for her lack of style and seeming lack of the capacity to relax. She thought next of the pile of books under her bed, books she’d barely glanced through at all this year.
The next image that came to her mind was that of Jordan again, but this time a fuzzy Jordan in the screen of her computer, speaking to her through a web-cam image, as he’d been doing for the last month. She hated the way he looked in that camera image – like a pale ghost, disfigured by the insecure Net connection. Just then, Jordan turned her head towards her in his sleep and she saw his real face and the lovely, normal color of his skin.
She tore her gaze away from his face, soft with sleep, and looked back at the clock. 6:59AM. She thought of the airport, the bustle and hassle, the packing she still had to do and the bother it would be to lug all her things down the stairs. All at once, she made a decision. With a deft flick of her finger, she turned the knob on top of the clock from “ON” to “OFF.”
When Jordan woke her with a panicked tone of voice four hours later, she pretended to panic too. “But the alarm-” she said. “What happened to the alarm?” It was no good panicking, though. She’d already missed the flight. Jordan confessed to her that night that he was secretly glad that the alarm hadn’t gone off. Jasmine smiled and kissed him, leading him by the hand into a dimly lit pub where music was blaring and a young crowd was milling about. All feigned upset and distress were gone from her face and she drew him close to her, holding a beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. This was the life, she thought. This was the life.
Tick tock, tick tock,
Went the big red clock.
Tick tock, tick tock,
Went her heels on the dock.
Hush now, everyone,
Mistress Murder’s on the run,
Careful there, little ones,
If she sees you then you’re done.
Mistress Murder, eyes so red,
A thousand deaths upon her head.
On their souls she surely fed,
Bodies filled with bullets of lead.
They locked her up and sealed her tight,
But then she vanished in the night,
Leaving guards there dead of fright,
Mistress Murder’s out, alright!
Now Mistress Murder’s left the town,
But surely she’ll be back around.
Tonight though we will sleep so sound,
We’ve run her out, she’s gone to ground!
It’s always extremely strange to move from daylight-saving-time to “normal” or winter-time. It makes you consider how time really is a thing we control. Or rather, the perception of time is something we control. By changing the clocks back an hour, we change the time of dawn, of dusk. Strange to ponder such things.
Yet, this is NOT why I decided to dedicate a post to the changing of the clocks here in the Holy Land. As much as I enjoy BSing about philosophy and pretending to understand the physics, such as they are, of time, I do not believe I could convincingly write an entire post on such things. No, what I wanted to demonstrate here is how religion rules this damn country.
Yom Kipur is coming up, which is a day of fasting in the Jewish religion. A day to apologize for the sins of your past year and turn over to a new page. The religious Jews, who, despite being a minority, have way too much power make the government declare a change to winter-time about a month earlier than the rest of the world. Why? Apparently so they won’t have to fast as much. Tomorrow starts officially at sundown of today in Judaism, and for some reason winter time makes the time between sundown to sundown shorter.
People who don’t even open the fridge on Shabes, since the lord forbids electricity on the Day of Rest, change the whole freaking clock to suit their needs. I can only say that I see this as RELIGION FAIL.
Slightly Ignorant 