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!"
