Saturday 15 January 2011

To everything there is a time and a season

When I took my daily walk in the park yesterday (still keeeping to New Year resolutions) I reflected on some day walking clockwise and another day counterclockwise, just for a change. It struck me that the words "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" must feel very strange for today's children because they don't know how to read the old-fashioned, non-digital clocks. Once upon a time, a mother would ask another mother: "Can your child read the clock yet?" Reading the clock was part of pre-school development tests. There were dozens of educational books, boring and exiting, involving clocks. But the other day our middle son told everybody on Facebook that his four-year-old boy woke him up saying: "It's 8.23, time to get up". I am proud of this clever grandchild, but I am a bit melancholy too. I have always disliked digital clocks, because you can clearly see time disappearing forever. In an analogue clock it comes back every twelve hours (yes, yes, I know...)

My favourite of my own books is From Mythic to Linear which is about the development of children's literature from archaic concept of time as recurrent, reversible, eternal - kairos, as in "a time and a season", the time of the Returning God; toward the linear, one-directional, irreversible time, chronos, leading to growing up, ageing and dying. Although I know that time is irreversible, classic clocks provide a sense of security. It is ten o'clock right now, and it will be ten o'clock tomorrow morning again.

I will not think about belonging to the last generation of non-digitnal clocks. I'll go and take a walk in the park. Counterclockwise.

2 comments:

anton said...

what kid doesn't know how to read a face clock? they probably won't use them, but they see them everywhere.

Clémentine Beauvais said...

I'm sure all kids still learn to read face clocks! That said, I'm really bad at reading them. I can't figure out the time without the numbers. I finally learnt to read clocks more than 4 years after I learnt to read. True story.