Turning back the clock

First, your public-service message: at 0200 tomorrow, be sure to turn your clocks back one hour. Daylight Savings Time is over until next March.

I bet you all knew that, anyway...



When I cheated and set most of my clocks back this evening, it struck me that I wished I could keep spinning those hands back, back to a time when I was happy, when I actually believed that today was good and tomorrow would be even better.

But how far back would I have to go?

Would I have to turn the hands nine month's-worth, back to the days when I knew the joy of having a lovely, talented woman whom I loved and adored committed to me, with her love offered to me in perpetuity? If I went back that far, could I do anything to keep her from changing her mind two months later and setting her sights on someone else?

Would I have to turn the hands back a total of five years, to a time when I let another woman slip away, a different but oh-so-loving lady who, unlike the most recent, never betrayed my trust even as she was leaving?

Would I have to turn it back to a time before I was offered a chance to create a new magazine -- the pinnacle of my own little professional world -- by people who let the whole thing collapse in a sorry mess of unpaid debts and hard feelings?

Just how far back would I have to go?

Tonight my failures seem tied to the inexorable forward motion of the clock's hands. So many mistakes, so many instances when I trusted those who are untrustworthy, when I let my emotions lead me down paths that ended in sadness, when my own weaknesses kept me from reaching my goals.

Perhaps I should try to force the clock's hands back to a time when my primary objective in everything I did was taking what I wanted, when I was capable of false emotions to get my way, when my sole purpose was self-gratification. There was a time when my own pleasure was all that mattered.

But if I went back that far, I would have to somehow have to erase the disgust today's "me" feels for that long-ago ancestor.

Over the years, I transformed myself (to be very blunt) from a "fucker" into a "lover," from a "taker" to a genuine friend. It wasn't always easy, and I haven't mastered all of it yet. But I did it.

And the payoff for becoming what I would consider a decent person? There is no payoff. I am alone.

If I was granted the power to turn back the clock in a way that could save me from the pointless years that lie ahead, I could pick several places for the backwards journey to stop. I think I know the one I'd choose, know the exact point at which I'd like to pick up my life and change the way I handled the days that came after.

But it doesn't matter, because I cannot do that.

All I can do, all any of us can do, is drop back one lousy hour.

Somehow, that doesn't seem fair.


NOT-REALLY-PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT: Once again, It's me and ol' Blue Eyes, sippin' Bourbon as he sings it:

It's a lonesome old town
when you're not around
I'm lonely as I can be.

I never knew how much I missed you
but now I can plainly see.

It's a lonesome old town
when you're not around
How I wish you'd come back to me.

I never knew how much I missed you
but now I can plainly see
It's a lonesome old town
when you're not around
How I wish you'd come back to me.

How I wish you'd come back to me.

(Written by Charles Kisco and Harry Tobias)