What time do you have?

How many times, over the years, has someone, out of the blue, come up to you and asked “Do you have the time?” (or was it a dime?) And, did you ever wonder if they were asking you just for the time? One little thing I have learned, in my short time as a watch enthusiast, is that this obsession with time and timepieces goes far beyond the instruments we wear on our wrists.

When I put on a watch in the morning, before I head out to the garden or the store, or to just wander, camera in hand, I’ve been thinking more and more about the time we are given. At this point, for some of us, there is less and less of it in front of us than there is behind us. For others, time is an abstract idea. They’re young, they’ve always been young, and time just doesn’t seem to have the ravaging effect on them as it does to those of us who’ve seen more than their share of harvest moons.

So, why get obsessed with watches? That’s something I’ve been asking myself for the past two years. It isn’t as if I need a watch to tell me what time it is. We have cellphones, and activity devises, everywhere there is something telling you what time it is. Coffee pots, microwave ovens, alarm clock, clocks in the car, clocks on the street, in stores, everywhere you look you see time staring you in the face.

I cannot answer that question about the obsession with time. For me, it’s less about that, and more about the handicraft of watchmaking. The caliber, the hands, the materials, the bracelets or straps, the crystal, the color of the watch. It’s like a car, or, and this is a stretch, a camera, both of which I have had my share of in this lifetime.

It's not ever as if I really look to find out the time from my watch, that often. I don’t have a lot of appointments, don’t really have to be anywhere that often. I’m unmoored from many of the responsibilities of life, now that I’ve rowed my boat to the shore. Oh, yes, I have to be somewhere at a certain time, and I usually get there in time, if not a few minutes before. But I don’t need a watch for that, not really.

No, it is as if the watch is a reminder of something bigger, something greater. And that is the incalculable profoundness of the time we are given here on earth. The watch, beating like a heart (especially the older wrist and pocket watches), in unison with a greater universal cadence.

Yes, the watch is here to tell you what time it is. But the time you have? That’s on each and everyone of us and what we do with it.

 

 

 

written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola - limited rights reserved