The broken watch

I thought that my watch broke, and my heart stopped. It wasn't really broken, I was able to fix it later, but in that moment I felt real panic. I've been riding my motorcycle a lot lately, so I have had some experience with this notion of real panic. It feels like nothing at all. As if all of your hopes and fear, ambitions and memories, everything that rely on as you build your life, simple evaporates underneath you. You feel nothing at all, just the sensation of perilous free fall, without any direction or mooring. You become keenly aware of your present situation and start to document everything with extreme categorical prejudice. I'm convinced that this an evolutionary trait. In times of danger or extreme stress or grief, we lose our ability to rationally consider things within the context of time or other people, and focus more on short-term, tactical realities. When I'm on the highway, and a large truck passes me, I feel true panic when the wind gust blows me around. I felt this way when I thought that my watch broke. Specifically, the leather strap snapped off. I examined it closely. This watch is cursed, by the way, this is not the first time something has gone wrong with it. I wear this watch everyday. I know every part of it. The glass faced is deeply scratched, a history of where I've been and the things that I've bumped into. A few stitches are colored differently, a testament to a red bic pen which was my salvation during an excruciatingly boring meeting. The watch is cursed but its my watch. My heart stopped when I thought it broke. I think that the reason lies in the memories associated with it. Fresh snow fall underneath sodium lights. Waiting outside a door with a quiet campus stretching in shallow slumber behind me. A rough area rug and a set of blue sheets turned over. I've been so many places and I've done so many things and most of them seem like dreams.

To commemorate the coming of spring, here is a photograph of a flowering tree that my Dad took almost two years ago: