Clockless

When you work for organizations around the world—in China, in England, in Chicago, Connecticut, Pennsylvania—the hours of the day track against few measures. At 4 AM you're on a conference call with someone just finishing their afternoon cookie. At 10 AM you're e-mailing with a client just back from lunch. All along you're trying to remember to hit 5 PM deadlines, for that's when your Connecticut friends are headed home.

Time loses scale, perspectives shift, and in all these years of doing this, I've laid a claim to one timeless zone that is mine alone: an afternoon walk through familiar streets, in any weather. I take my camera often, just in case a fox trots by, or a gang of deer, or if ice hangs in spectacular daggers from the limbs of a tired tree. I unjam the thoughts I might have had the rest of the day long.

Yesterday I went out in the thick of snow, looking for color and succeeding hardly at all, for it was white against white, gray against gray, footprints already swallowed by drift. Until finally I happened upon this child with her bright pink saucer, living a clockless moment, too.