TASADI & NHATO: "Time Ticks Away"

There are time zones, rather than miles between the country I left and the country I came back to. We step in a plane at night, these days, simply to step out the next morning on the other side of the world. It comes at a price, though. A persistent jetlag is the culprit of my nightly activities. I open a door and breathe a coolness that lives in this city like a night creature. The dark silence outside is comforting and it feels that I am the only dwelling soul that is awake at this impossible hour. I fell in a deep comatose sleep very early in the evening, yet came back from it before the clock struck midnight. The haunted hour, they say, but the only things that are haunting me are thoughts that emerge with intuitive clarity like the sun rising in a desert. You can do the wrong thing, for the right reason. Or the right thing, for the wrong reason. It’s too late to invite the sandman over by a glass of red wine, and too early for a cup of coffee to fully wake up, at least if I want to keep my chances open to catch some sleep still. Time ticks away, while it still can, for its ticking gets increasingly rare in this digital age. It blinks, nowadays. Cheap electronics have banned the dignity of roman signs and gracious hands on golden watches. Time is just as steadfast as before. But we now measure it with a stopwatch, where we used to pace our day by the hourly jingle-jangle of bombastic tower bells or an ugly yet cheerful cuckoo clock. You need to waste time, to find it.