lemontree
vicki wolkins
Before there were caesium-based atomic clocks, before there were oscillating quartz crystal watches, before there were precision Swiss mechanical timepieces, before the era of pendulum-driven grandfather clocks, before the medieval horologia, time was measured in a more leisurely way. The sun came up, the sun went down…and a day passed. The moon grew thin, the moon grew fat…and a month passed. The leaves grew, the leaves fell, and the seasons came and went.
This is a world where billable hours are measured in increments of six minutes, where you must have the form handed in and stamped by no later than five o’clock, where you’re expected to be in the office fifteen minutes early, where you have to be home at 9PM because that’s when your show starts, where the last two minutes of the football game takes twenty minutes to play because every second counts.
But if we walk out on an autumn afternoon and take the time to look up from our watch-based existence, we can see that the world still keeps the old schedule. And now and then, if we’re wise, we’ll spend an afternoon among the fallen leaves, appreciating nature’s own pace.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
