The Cerebral Catalyst

Please find enclosed one deceased watch
which cacked it at 9:27:16 on Tuesday
I was not altogether surprised to learn of its demise
as I have previously owned a number of your products

one ongoing complaint I have with your watches
is that they focus too obsessively on dividing time
on demarcating life in terms of split seconds
thereby losing the real sensual experience of time

if you can
try to imagine time as
the silent depths of oceans
as complex patterns of sleep
as an undiscovered underground spring
as sheet lightning
salmon spawning
swans nesting
olive branches gnarled
sheep munching on grass
terns playfully dancing the skies—
the shuddering collapse of a red gum in an inaccessible forest

that's the sort of watch
I would like you to design

in the meantime, however, kindly forward
me a replacement watch as it was
still under warranty when it died.

Yours faithfully,
Mark List

______________________________________
George Anderson was born in Montreal and presently teaches in Sydney, Australia. He has published, or is forthcoming, in dozens of magazines in the English-speaking world, including New England Review, LINQ, Blackmail Press, Unlikely Stories and Another Toronto Quarterly. He edits the student magazine Ephemeral.

posted 10.31.05.

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