How Do You Measure Time

 

It was a very dark evening (a poet might reference stygian), pregnant with potential precipitation. A billowing belly of black cloud overrode the belted horizon and pushed unrelentingly against the dusky western hills. The hills themselves sighed and pushed back, as best they could.

 

I was at home, sitting quietly in the snow-draped Buddha Garden wrapped in an old REI goose-down parka with a glass of very early (before the sell-out) Charles Krug Cabernet Sauvignon in my hand, listening to a chorous of insects busy deep under ground whispering secrets; to land-locked crustaceans chattering; to myopic underground rodents rattling on and on and on about their summer schedule: the carefully mapped offensives planed against my garden - how best to capture the vegetables (Scarlet Nantes carrots, Russian Doukhobor - Purple Glazer garlic, and Italian parsley heading the list). My indignant ears seemed ready to explode, to turn themselves inside out and upside down, when Doctor Hobart wandered by, his weathered head nodding to a rhythm only he could hear, or understand. He paused on the wooden bridge by the tea house, turned to the east, and said, to no one I could see, in his magnificent old dry oloroso sherry voice: "Remember, 1992 has departed, slipped like a noxious weed through a government checkpoint; has slipped silently and unobtrusively into yet another history book penned by Chronos, never to grace again, in our lifetimes, these barren slopes with its wild and pleasant splendor."

 

I was confused, but Doctor Hobart continued: "Look, 1993 has already outgrown its khaki, knee-pants, and is enjoying a glorious adolescence. I caught it only yesterday, behind the burnt-orange red barn, smoking an unfiltered Camel cigarette, its trembling hand on March's unclothed virgin thigh. Look, if sideburns are sprouting in the month of May can pubic hair be far behind? And what might July, August, and September bring? The previous 365 days have been reduced to less than a cipher. 365 days! WAIT! did I say? 365 days? It seems I speak again in round numbers with my circular mouth." The doctor walked contemplatively, or was that contemptuously, toward me. I opened a book of poems by Xenophanes that I happened to have in one of my pockets and pretended to read.

 

Doctor Hobart continued pontificating, as much to hear his own voice as to communicate anything to anyone. "Why there are many ways to describe a year," he said, as much to himself as to to anyone else. "There is the sidereal year - 365.26 days, or 365 days 6 hours 9 minutes 10 seconds - the true revolution period of the Earth. Or, the tropical year - 365.24 days, or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 45 seconds the time-interval between successive passages of the Sun across the First Point of Aries. (The First Point being not quite stationary due to precession shifts, which is why the tropical year is approximately twenty minutes shorter than the sidereal year.) The anomalistic year -365.26 days, or 365 days 6 hours 13 minutes 53 seconds - the interval between one perihelion passage and the is next. (It is slightly longer than the sidereal year because the position of the Earth's perihelion in its orbit moves by about 11 seconds of arc annually.) And the calendar year -365.24 days, or 365 days 5 hours 49 minutes 12 seconds - the mean length of the year according to the Gregorian calendar." The Doctor seemed excited; I continued to read Xenophanes, oblivious to his agitation:

 

Doctor Hobart finally said, furrowing his thin gray hair with a harrow of bony fingers, "Isn’t it time to think about the Tea Party?"

 

Silence seemed to flood the garden like an oil sheen on Prince William Sound. I’m sure all molecular motion ceased. Maple stomata stopped breathing. Worried insects slammed shut their spiracles and I closed my book and sighed.

 

"Yes, by George and by Jill, or should I say, by Doctor Hobart? You are right, for a change, “Yes, of course, I must indeed think about the celebration, the Second Annual Trout Creek Press and Dog River Review Tea Party!"

 

A Little More About Kleadrap

A Little More About Kleadrap

I suppose I ought to tell you a little more about Kleadrap. As I may have mentioned earlier, it's a small town, perhaps six hundred permanent residents. The main street runs along the Willamette meridian and is called appropriately, Baseline Road. Perhaps five numbered streets intersect Baseline, but at a peculiar angle. The surveyor, Dennis Crumb, who laid out the original grid for the town in 1908 was new to the discipline, and, despite having a bachelors degree in surveying and mapping, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering he was perhaps overwhelmed by the responsibility suddenly thrust upon him because, it seems he simply failed to take into account the magnetic declination for the area, roughly 15 degrees when plotting the embryonic town. Did he ever consider the Agonic Line?

As a result, all of the original North/South cross streets intersect Baseline at something greater or less than 90 degrees. Each platted block thereby became a parallelogram. To compound matters, when the early pioneers constructed their homes they measured from the center line of the nearby cross street to lay out the foundations for their homes rather than employ the 3:4:5 ratio. As a result all the primary buildings in Kleadrap are parallelograms. The one time visitor simply ‘passing through’ may not be aware of this as the difference is slight and as all buildings in ‘downtown’ Kleadrap conform to this aberration it is not particularly noticeable. Visitors may leave with a nagging sense that something didn’t seem quite right but be unable to identify the reason for their unease. Of course the inhabitants are made aware of this aberration every time they lay down tile or wall-to-wall carpeting. None of the walls in any of the early homes meet at a right angle.

Kleadrap has a current population of around 600 people, considerably more during the summer vacation period, and fall, when picking season (beets, rutabagas, and onions) is in full swing. Main street boasts one market, one gasoline station, one tavern, two gift shops, a post office, and two other buildings that are vacant most of the time, or accommodate various transient businesses for a few months. Tax time might see an accountant or two move in and rent an apartment above the tavern, and once in a while a local, or occasionally out-of-town artist sets up shop, but they soon realize there are too few people in the community, either permanent or transient, with too little discretionary income, to make any year round business viable.

This was not always so. Once, an opera house stood at the corner of Third and A street, attracting such luminaries as Paollie Accardi and Melanie Moreau. Historic rumor has it that Oscar Wilde had considered making an appearance. And there was the ‘Roller Dome’, located at the end of Lava Bed Road. There aren’t any photographs from that period but locals say Leo Selzer attended the opening. 

A twelve-grade school house, located next to the now boarded-up grange building, graduated twenty-seven classes over twenty-seven years. Now, only the rare discovery of an agate marble, or the oxidized tip from a spinning top indicates the fervent activity that must have once taken place.

Time rusts and dissolves everything, even memory.

Then came rumors that F. S. Whinkla had moved to Kleadrap. I think that was in the mid seventies.

Nothing has been the same since.