43
Chasing a sound, Church Hill Bank, Clockworks
Tonight, I chased a sound down — like Miles chased ran runs the voodoo down — down normally the dark, quiet avenues of in Lakeside, VA. Unlit and splotched now with Purplish reflections of a distant faraway band splotch splotched on the sides of bungalows. Were those hand drums I heard? A cover of Fleetwood Mac? It didn’t matter as much as to tell me if that I was getting closer. or farther away not. And I was.
Every other house I passed with had its lights on with windows open, or strings of light bulbs hanging in the backyard in an effort to convince me looking giving me a pale, wide-eyed look pale yellow in the dark, to convince me that there was the source of the sound. But as I ran past each house, the reverberations echoes dissipated like driving through clouds clouds when you drive through them. Moving forward—running past—was enough for me to dismiss that. So I crossed lane-less Hermitage Rd. to get to Lakeside Ave, and in the air without trees, The space opened up the music opened up. I ran past the empty, open Hardee’s to bustling Final Gravity to realize finally that the music, growing clearer by the stride, came from the botanical gardens north of farther down the road. The same gardens thats parking lot lent me shade about a year ago as I ate cut up huarache with a plastic knife — the same one with tickets and space to sit and chit-chat.
And as I slowed to a walk, the story slowed, too. Too slow. So I turned it around and ran back to my house. only realizing then that the music would chase The music chased me back the whole way. The reverberation echo of guitars slipped around thin trees and roofs and corners. It ran past me running past the scene of a couple slow dancing in an their apartment laundry room. It shied away from skipped a little near a dog doing an impression of a man barking. It boomed lunged across a school playground. Then pretty much after that it had disappeared.
The reincarnation of young Sufjan Stevens straddling a bicycle in shorts, a black tee, and a camouflage hat baseball cap— looking at his phone his pensive, unshaven face lit brightened by his phone— looking pensive and carefree unshaven or lonely and determined— is enough to distract me for a few seconds from the grand, empty beige unoccupied Church Hill Bank behind him. in the background. behind him
Jim Ahmed, trained horologist, tells me he moved to Richmond from Canada forty years ago. With steady fingers and a jeweler’s loupe wedged under between his cheek and brow, he has been fixing fixed clocks, watches, and timepieces for lawyers, judges, and officials or anyone and crooks. since then, at least. By my If I am to believe trust there are only and always 31,356,000 seconds in a year, that would be mean 1,254,240,000 ticks have cut into him his ears and weathered sharpened his fingers sounded over that the span of those four decades. has spent all of some forty years in the US repairing clocks, watches, timepieces. His shop, Clockworks, There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. If we’re to believe
Now, he has become a clock. Deft and discerning. He opens his mouth to crack his jaw: another kind of tic to mark the time.
I bring Mr. Ahmed my watch. I shattered the face in a vice trying to replace the battery myself. He asks me, sort of smirking cracking his jaw, why I think his shop is so cluttered. It’s an absolute mess of clocks draping the walls and piled on the floor with plastic baggies and trinket dishes full of gears and bands; his store our conversation is broken every chiming every five minutes by chimes telling the time all over the world—time zones split into far more precise chunks. as it tells the time of all the universe—the center of the cosmos—split into like a failed experiment in musique concrete
He answers his question: It’s to keep away business. Then he tells me it wouldn’t be worth fixing my watch, triple-wraps a rubber band around the face, and hands it back to me.