Under a nonexistent sky, lost to a possibility of rain, or just my overthinking, the church bells began to chime. The churchyard mere feet away, my morning unfolding without worry of time, was severed by song and a contemplation, that halted my breathing and gave me pause in my movements…what is it about the din of church bells, that stirs my dark soul? Why is it, no matter where I am, what I’m doing, I’ll stop and let the clanging of song and chiming of time, solely exist? I’m present in that moment, for what the bells are speaking. Is it time that moves me? I accepted my fate as mortal as a small child, beside my father’s vacated body. I accepted death’s spontaneity as a teenager, when on the receiving end of a loaded gun…and the overdoses that took, the near deaths that spoke, the miscarriages, the diagnoses… …it’s all brought back to timing…to time. Or am I heralded back to a space or two or many, in time, where bells tolled my own deaths…tolled my every sin…tolled my awakenings…my births…my joys? There was a point where I felt controlled by the rules of time…but I threw the concept away. Clocks in my home are set at random. When they slow and the batteries die, I let them rest, sometimes a year, before setting them to work again at the time of their revival. The same goes for any clock stopped due to a blackout, where they revive, they resume. I lost the will for watches more than a decade ago. No watch could be worn by me…no matter their make, their battery or wound, they’d gradually slow to a stop within a couple of days of being placed about my wrist. An enigma of energy or foretelling of the inevitable, I don’t question the inertia, nor the sentience…I just allow the impulse, to let it be, to be…within, running parallel, without…I flow and I forward…but at the sounding of the bells, I stop and give myself freely to the spell.

E.A. O'Connell. December 2018