(no subject)
Again, I wrote these completely inspired by my own personal experiences. They came from no where except my own thoughts. Please accept these as I have written them, not skewed in any way by your own bias. Thank you
The Clockworker
by: Michael Chandler
Only in the most requiring of tasks was the clockworker regarded as attentive and worthy. Paying attention to the most miniscule of details was his daily chore, for arranging the gears and springs that abet the motioning clock hands was his profession and had been since he can well remember, even during his apprenticeship. It is all he had ever known and one of the few things in his life that brought him great joy.
The liberation he felt when putting together an old clock and restoring it back to it's original splendor was a central pivot in his life that he would not have bartered for all of King Soloman's riches. Each new gear setting was another challenge. A new puzzle of sorts. Each clock pushing him further than he had ever been. As this was his life, he took his time greatly. He let no gear go unnoticed and no chime unstruck.
His joy of solving problems stemmed directly from his love of clocks and the great detail that was demanded in their repair. Puzzles, conundrums, riddles, great mystery tales, and piecing things together using his mechanical skill, were the many things that occupied his days with splendor. His mind was never at ease, always ready to tackle the next solvent predicament (which is the way he preffered it to be).
There was not a problem that went astray from his thoughts until a solution had presented itself. On occasion this man had been known to stay up many nights until a problem was solved or a riddle had been answered. Once, he was even seen down at the local ale house barraging the customers and the bartender with questions that at the time (he was in a drunken haze at this point) seemed to be leading him logically to a particular question's answer (being an affable man he went in the next day and apologized to the barkeep, noting that had he not been binging and forgot, he would have most certainly picked up the tab for the customers, which he proceeded to do as he acknowledged his uncouth behavior from the night before).
His house was amiss with finished puzzles and scraps of paper that were scribbled with the working outs of riddles and conquered enigmas, and as he left one brisk and bright autumn morning he thought of what obstacles lay in store for him on this day, aside from the usual matters of reconstructing a new day's order of worn grandfather clocks, and how uplifted he would feel after conquering these barriers. As he neared his shop, he noticed a white line shifting back and forth in the leafy breeze, as if it were hanging from his shop's sign. As he came closer he saw that it was a rope that had been slung over the top of the sign, left to dangle until someone came along to take it down. It was a longer rope, it's color tawny in nature with the material rough and distressed. As his stare proceeded down it's length, he noticed a knot tied near the center of the rope.
The knot was...exquisitely complex, with many loops and twirls that seemed to add to the extravagence. Even though it was bizarre, the knot appealed to the clockworker. It's rustic appearance allured his accostable mind, and as he stared with the morning sun at his back the knot looked difficult, yet simple to unravel. Ambituous, yet austere. Complicated, but absolute. While, at first, the clockworker was intimidated, he now felt a shard of excitement. He knew that to untie this knot would be a great undertaking. A great challenge.
His heart leapt at the thought. He immediately ran to the door of his shop, unlocked the bolt with the key that dangled from his belt, and pushed the door into a groaning submission until it's hinges were open far. He then hurried to the back of the shop where he kept the cleaning utensils which, quite ashamedly to him, had been in disuse for some time. As he pushed aside the mop handles and scooted away the buckets, he lit his oil lantern and let the light fall upon the small step-ladder that was nestled in the corner. Almost afraid to leave his new discovery outside ungaurded, he snatched up the ladder and raced to the front door.
The rope was just out of the man's reach so as to warrant the step-ladder. The ladder's joints cracked under the pressure of the clockworker as he hoisted himself up to unhang the rope from its lazy dangle. Under inspection, now behind the shops counter, the man poured over the length of the rope under the dim veil of the lantern's oily flame. As he surveyed the tangled mess before him, he was dumbfounded to find that his eyes were drawn away from the knot at the ropes center, and every time thereafter when he tried to focus on the knot it seemed that there was an inexplicable force drawing his gaze away and out of focus. The man had never felt so frustrated in all of his life. As aforementioned, any puzzle that was put before him, he strained with every fibre of his existence untill it was solved. Untill an end had presented itself. With this rope on the otherhand, it was something different altogether. It was as if the knot was taunting him.
His mind was aflutter, and it seemed his heart was betraying him everytime he started to trace a path together in the knot's twisted form. He was second guessing himself which was something he never did. Every intelligent thought that had a begining in the knot's riddled form, quickly ended in a flash of frustrated confusion.
Finding comfort in his clockwork was the only thing that he could think to do. Reassuring himself that he could still do a given task gave him a soothing calm, but there was still something pulling him from his work. He would be oiling parts or adjusting gear ratios to the precision of one rotation in any given minute one moment, and without knowing how or why he would find himself standing over the rope. An inexplicable stream of subconcious thoughts and movements would overtake him...almost drawing him towards the knot once again. The same allure that lead him to take it down off of his sign post, only stronger and more vivid -- warming his hands over a fire and not knowing when his hands were warm, could not pull them back by any means only finding himself drawn towards them only the more; like a moth towards the street's lanterns. He could recoil only too late, leaving boiling blisters and scars of livid ash upon his hands.
Many people came in that day to either pick up a clock, or to drop one off for regular maintenence. The clockworker's mood was cheerful. Even the people who were familiar with his usual demeanor didn't sense the demon clawing at his heart. Which is why it was such a surprise to the small town when the next day the shop was closed.
It took many weeks for the patrons of the shop to recieve compensation for the lack of service that they were recieving. No one knew what exactly happened those weeks, but when the clockworker opened the store again he went on like nothing had happened. Like he had never been gone. He ofcourse apologized to his regular customers, offering them free services in reparation. For the following weeks, things went about as usual. Usual business, usual clientel, usual maintenence, and the usual conversations with the elderly who stopped in from time to time.
You could hear remarks around the small town occassionally. Remarks in the barber shop about how the clockworker seemed "different". Their were remarks about how his eyes were "grey and empty", even though his friendly smile was still prevalent. Most people however, thought nothing of it. After all, they would place an order with him, pick it up the next day on time and fully repaired. What was there to worry. "He's his old self again", they would say.
It was a brisk, snowy evening (for it was winter now) and the stars hung unreachably high in the clear air, glancing shards of light off the fresh blanket that crunched under the patrolman's feet. He was making his regular rounds and he had just come up from Riverstreet on his way back to the station. The patrolman was of principled order and strict discipline. It was said that you could set your watch by his patrol routes. Always passing the general store at quarter past the hour, going through the park and arriving at it's entrance at half past, and passing into townsquare and onto the station by midnight. As the patrolman reached city hall at the square's center, he brought his shoulders up to his neck shrugging off an oncoming chill as he stiffened his ears awaiting the belltowers's midnight chime. "As regular as clockwork" he would mutter to himself, only the chime never came. He looked up to see that the clock's minute-hand was frozen at 11:59 pm. "Not quite cold enough for the clock to freeze-up". Non-chalantly he let his pocketwatch slip from his coat pocket, knowing that he had timed it perfectly with the belltower earlier this week and thinking perhaps he had been out of step that evening and arrived a bit early. His watch read 12:07.
It was the postman who found the clockworker early the next morning. When the authorities arrived, they found the clockworker laying on the ground underneath his shop's signpost. He was frozen solid from exposure to the elements and he had rope marks around his neck. At first, it seemed that the strength of the rope gave out with his weight after he had been hanging there for quite awhile, judging by the depth of the burns around his neck. The rope was on the ground beside him. It was a longer rope, it's color tawny in nature with the material rough and distressed, but upon looking closer they found no evidence of a knot in the rope, or of one ever being tied. It seemed that with the man's last breath, the knot gave way; untieing and leaving the man to fall to the ground only moments after his heart had stopped beating.
In vivid scars on his chest, almost like it was branded on account of the blistering of the skin, were six words.
"A Broken Mind Bars No Burden"
And all the clocks in the town struck there midnight bells, resuming there endless movements from where they had halted the night before.
The Clockworker
by: Michael Chandler
Only in the most requiring of tasks was the clockworker regarded as attentive and worthy. Paying attention to the most miniscule of details was his daily chore, for arranging the gears and springs that abet the motioning clock hands was his profession and had been since he can well remember, even during his apprenticeship. It is all he had ever known and one of the few things in his life that brought him great joy.
The liberation he felt when putting together an old clock and restoring it back to it's original splendor was a central pivot in his life that he would not have bartered for all of King Soloman's riches. Each new gear setting was another challenge. A new puzzle of sorts. Each clock pushing him further than he had ever been. As this was his life, he took his time greatly. He let no gear go unnoticed and no chime unstruck.
His joy of solving problems stemmed directly from his love of clocks and the great detail that was demanded in their repair. Puzzles, conundrums, riddles, great mystery tales, and piecing things together using his mechanical skill, were the many things that occupied his days with splendor. His mind was never at ease, always ready to tackle the next solvent predicament (which is the way he preffered it to be).
There was not a problem that went astray from his thoughts until a solution had presented itself. On occasion this man had been known to stay up many nights until a problem was solved or a riddle had been answered. Once, he was even seen down at the local ale house barraging the customers and the bartender with questions that at the time (he was in a drunken haze at this point) seemed to be leading him logically to a particular question's answer (being an affable man he went in the next day and apologized to the barkeep, noting that had he not been binging and forgot, he would have most certainly picked up the tab for the customers, which he proceeded to do as he acknowledged his uncouth behavior from the night before).
His house was amiss with finished puzzles and scraps of paper that were scribbled with the working outs of riddles and conquered enigmas, and as he left one brisk and bright autumn morning he thought of what obstacles lay in store for him on this day, aside from the usual matters of reconstructing a new day's order of worn grandfather clocks, and how uplifted he would feel after conquering these barriers. As he neared his shop, he noticed a white line shifting back and forth in the leafy breeze, as if it were hanging from his shop's sign. As he came closer he saw that it was a rope that had been slung over the top of the sign, left to dangle until someone came along to take it down. It was a longer rope, it's color tawny in nature with the material rough and distressed. As his stare proceeded down it's length, he noticed a knot tied near the center of the rope.
The knot was...exquisitely complex, with many loops and twirls that seemed to add to the extravagence. Even though it was bizarre, the knot appealed to the clockworker. It's rustic appearance allured his accostable mind, and as he stared with the morning sun at his back the knot looked difficult, yet simple to unravel. Ambituous, yet austere. Complicated, but absolute. While, at first, the clockworker was intimidated, he now felt a shard of excitement. He knew that to untie this knot would be a great undertaking. A great challenge.
His heart leapt at the thought. He immediately ran to the door of his shop, unlocked the bolt with the key that dangled from his belt, and pushed the door into a groaning submission until it's hinges were open far. He then hurried to the back of the shop where he kept the cleaning utensils which, quite ashamedly to him, had been in disuse for some time. As he pushed aside the mop handles and scooted away the buckets, he lit his oil lantern and let the light fall upon the small step-ladder that was nestled in the corner. Almost afraid to leave his new discovery outside ungaurded, he snatched up the ladder and raced to the front door.
The rope was just out of the man's reach so as to warrant the step-ladder. The ladder's joints cracked under the pressure of the clockworker as he hoisted himself up to unhang the rope from its lazy dangle. Under inspection, now behind the shops counter, the man poured over the length of the rope under the dim veil of the lantern's oily flame. As he surveyed the tangled mess before him, he was dumbfounded to find that his eyes were drawn away from the knot at the ropes center, and every time thereafter when he tried to focus on the knot it seemed that there was an inexplicable force drawing his gaze away and out of focus. The man had never felt so frustrated in all of his life. As aforementioned, any puzzle that was put before him, he strained with every fibre of his existence untill it was solved. Untill an end had presented itself. With this rope on the otherhand, it was something different altogether. It was as if the knot was taunting him.
His mind was aflutter, and it seemed his heart was betraying him everytime he started to trace a path together in the knot's twisted form. He was second guessing himself which was something he never did. Every intelligent thought that had a begining in the knot's riddled form, quickly ended in a flash of frustrated confusion.
Finding comfort in his clockwork was the only thing that he could think to do. Reassuring himself that he could still do a given task gave him a soothing calm, but there was still something pulling him from his work. He would be oiling parts or adjusting gear ratios to the precision of one rotation in any given minute one moment, and without knowing how or why he would find himself standing over the rope. An inexplicable stream of subconcious thoughts and movements would overtake him...almost drawing him towards the knot once again. The same allure that lead him to take it down off of his sign post, only stronger and more vivid -- warming his hands over a fire and not knowing when his hands were warm, could not pull them back by any means only finding himself drawn towards them only the more; like a moth towards the street's lanterns. He could recoil only too late, leaving boiling blisters and scars of livid ash upon his hands.
Many people came in that day to either pick up a clock, or to drop one off for regular maintenence. The clockworker's mood was cheerful. Even the people who were familiar with his usual demeanor didn't sense the demon clawing at his heart. Which is why it was such a surprise to the small town when the next day the shop was closed.
It took many weeks for the patrons of the shop to recieve compensation for the lack of service that they were recieving. No one knew what exactly happened those weeks, but when the clockworker opened the store again he went on like nothing had happened. Like he had never been gone. He ofcourse apologized to his regular customers, offering them free services in reparation. For the following weeks, things went about as usual. Usual business, usual clientel, usual maintenence, and the usual conversations with the elderly who stopped in from time to time.
You could hear remarks around the small town occassionally. Remarks in the barber shop about how the clockworker seemed "different". Their were remarks about how his eyes were "grey and empty", even though his friendly smile was still prevalent. Most people however, thought nothing of it. After all, they would place an order with him, pick it up the next day on time and fully repaired. What was there to worry. "He's his old self again", they would say.
It was a brisk, snowy evening (for it was winter now) and the stars hung unreachably high in the clear air, glancing shards of light off the fresh blanket that crunched under the patrolman's feet. He was making his regular rounds and he had just come up from Riverstreet on his way back to the station. The patrolman was of principled order and strict discipline. It was said that you could set your watch by his patrol routes. Always passing the general store at quarter past the hour, going through the park and arriving at it's entrance at half past, and passing into townsquare and onto the station by midnight. As the patrolman reached city hall at the square's center, he brought his shoulders up to his neck shrugging off an oncoming chill as he stiffened his ears awaiting the belltowers's midnight chime. "As regular as clockwork" he would mutter to himself, only the chime never came. He looked up to see that the clock's minute-hand was frozen at 11:59 pm. "Not quite cold enough for the clock to freeze-up". Non-chalantly he let his pocketwatch slip from his coat pocket, knowing that he had timed it perfectly with the belltower earlier this week and thinking perhaps he had been out of step that evening and arrived a bit early. His watch read 12:07.
It was the postman who found the clockworker early the next morning. When the authorities arrived, they found the clockworker laying on the ground underneath his shop's signpost. He was frozen solid from exposure to the elements and he had rope marks around his neck. At first, it seemed that the strength of the rope gave out with his weight after he had been hanging there for quite awhile, judging by the depth of the burns around his neck. The rope was on the ground beside him. It was a longer rope, it's color tawny in nature with the material rough and distressed, but upon looking closer they found no evidence of a knot in the rope, or of one ever being tied. It seemed that with the man's last breath, the knot gave way; untieing and leaving the man to fall to the ground only moments after his heart had stopped beating.
In vivid scars on his chest, almost like it was branded on account of the blistering of the skin, were six words.
"A Broken Mind Bars No Burden"
And all the clocks in the town struck there midnight bells, resuming there endless movements from where they had halted the night before.