time for justice

The clock on the wall over the doorway to the courtroom read "5:01.33." I lie. It was not a digital timepiece, so it was impossible to record accurately its divination of time. (Does a clock read? How about announce, say, state, declare, report?) A design straight out of the Seventies. Metal or faux metal hour and minute hands. For the hours, solid silverish bars: for the numeral 12 placeholder, a thicker and darker unenumerated bar. The hour hand on where the 5 would be. In that minimalist era, designers assumed we could figure out where and what the hours were. And they were right. The minute hand roughly halfway between the 12 position and the first minute afterward. During my first visit to the courtroom, it was easy to discern and conclude that the clock was moribund. It wasn't ticking. Nor tocking. Dead battery or electrical disconnect, who could say. Time stood still. A week later, the clock made the same stoic statement. Time still stood still. Time froze as justice prevailed. Or as justice's facade winked, even as the hour and minute were suspended in time (actually, out of time). Was it time for justice. Or had the time for justice or its synonyms passed long before any defendant entered the courtroom. Rest assured, nearly all the defendants did not pass under the faceless clock as described. That portal was reserved for the public: lawyers, friends, relatives, advocates, intimates, enablers, defendants alike. Most, though not all, defendants entered through a doorway in back of the bench, to the bench's right. They were shackled, cuffed, chained, guarded by uniforms with guns. Typically guarded in their statements though sometimes unguarded and unvarnished, to their detriment. A minority of defendants came through the public's clocked-unclocked-stillborn entrance, to sit in the secular pews. When called to the bench, they spoke or kept clocklike silence and let counsel confer with the judge. But was the clock halted in its tracks at 5 (add a half minute or so) ante meridiem or post meridiem. Was time merely shutting its eyes to these matters, these sunrise or sunset deliberations. Was time as blind as justice, as the trope has it. Time was recusing itself from blame or guilt, from accusation or defense, from guilt or innocence. The sun doth shine on the just and the unjust. The same goes for time. Can we speculate on why no one has repaired this clock. Does anyone know or care. What difference would it make. One can argue, your honor, that the defendants, and all the other members of the cast (defense and prosecuting attorneys, judge, armed guards, stenographer, audience) would prefer to not hear the infinitesimal click of time, the merciless hourglass sands trickling in accord with the laws of gravity and physics. Who needs such added pressure. Better for the clock on the wood-paneled wall to pause Sphinxlike; an oracular nolo contendere. May time be called as a witness, your honor. Would that time healed all wounds, and crimes. Does anybody really know what time it is, or was, or should be. Does anybody really care. Is it time for justice or for mercy or both or neither. No clock, ticking or timeless, can say, state, declare, or report the verdict. Rain falls on the just and the unjust. Justice is served on a platter of petals and tears. 

The Clementine Chronicles, continued

Murder on the Disorient Express

Dramatis Personae:

OldWhiteGuy stereotypical converted-loft dweller, goatee-adorned; spectacles-wearer; enough head hair to comb except on the sides owing to stylist's shorning the week preceding; 5'10"; 169 pounds; blue jeans; blue T-shirt; blue-green-purple flannel shirt not tucked in; fragrance: Luna Rossa by Prada; Euphoria by Calvin Klein deodorant; unshaven for several days

Three Ravens pecking at unseen morsels on the roadway or bickering on the chain-link fence or telephone wires

DismemberedClementine* Jackson Pollocked (except for color; goldenrod-clementine-flesh yellow-orange backgrounded by burnt umber wetted, ergo Mark Rothko'ed except for the scatteredness; picture a spherical descent bursting onto the concrete, tossed from an upper-story window; motive and perp, unknown) into 22 segments and/or fragments of said segments, on the sidewalk [see below] by the side exit of the brick former knitting mill; a splayed and still glistening ink-blottish stain artistically placed on the snow-bereft sidewalk as a place setting or as a result of the Capital Citrus Murder (CCM)
*cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 December 2018

DismemberedClementine Peeled Skin (absent, nowhere to be seen; unknown if peeled in one fell swoop or not)

DeadFish (scales on; head attached; accusatory cyclops-ish eye; absent corpse, nowhere to be seen; cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 February 2019)

62.8 CCM Suspects (40 apartments, average of 1.5 residents in each minus 1.0 LaughoristDweller [a.k.a. OldWhiteGuy], plus 3.8 happenstance, random street-cred pedestrians) 

Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers

Scene 1: 

Enter OldWhiteGuy, exits building, turns right, spots DismemberedClementine (rest in pieces, R.I.P.), halts, retreats, pivots left, inspects crime scene, counts segments, makes mental notes, turns right again, walks on ice- and snow-ridden sidewalk to car

OldWhiteGuy (posing as Hamlet Lear) (sotto voce): "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the skin!"

Enter Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers singing: "One love, one heart... Let's get together and feel all right... Hear the children cryin'; give thanks and praise to the Lord ... Is there a place for the hopeless sinner who has hurt all mankind just to save his soul? One love, one heart ... Let's get together and feel all right!"

Exeunt Omnes

Vac Vacancy

I am on vacation.

Vacation from what? a skeptic or cynic or demurrer would opine.

Speaking opine, as we speak and listen and blog, I am at the Pine Tree Inn, in Brantingham, New York, at this moment.

Can you find it, or me?

There must be dozens upon dozens of Pine Tree Inns or Lodges or Motels in these parts.

Many other years, while I was fully or partially or pretendingly and gainfully (as well as stressfully and tensely) employed, I pined for a woodsy retreat. A getaway. Now I'm sort of restless, although I revere the scenic drama, the butterfly on the flower, the dragonfly on the leaf, the mile-plus walks.

Restless, because I'm not making money as a self-employed entrepreneur.

Maybe it's the Protestant capitalistic work ethic thing, Max Weber-style.

Or an ancient Catholic guilt.

Or an urban yearning.

Time to go.

Maybe we'll talk later in the week.

Oh. I do have something to write home about. I finished a crossword. The first one, with maybe a few errors, in thirty years or more. You'd think a worldly wordsmith would be good at crossword puzzles, but you should remind yourself of Pawlie Kokonuts's attention deficit-surplus syndrome.

The puzzle was from New York magazine. I'm looking forward to seeing the answers in the next issue. A few parts were puzzling.

But no blank spaces.

We like that illusion, do we not? All the blanks filled in? (In relationships, jobs, games, transactions.)

A deception, surely.