I P.M. therefore I A.M.

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While I seldom have occasion to count beyond ten, I sometimes think the 24-hour clock would be a better option.  Since we have to face another major time malfunction (AKA switch to Daylight Saving Time) this coming weekend, I’m thinking about time.  That, and I recently had someone ask me to set up a noon Zoom meeting.  A nooner Zoomer is fine with me, but each time I have to ask is it “a.m.” or “p.m.”?  Parsimonious websites rather snarkily (but correctly) say that it’s neither.  It’s that liminal changeover between ante-meridian and post-meridian.  It, along with midnight, stands outside the a.m. and p.m. system.  Thankfully I don’t have many meetings at midnight, but still, a 24-hour clock, such as military folk like to use, makes sense.  A meeting at 12:00 would always be noon, and 24:00 would always be midnight.

I tend to wake up around 3:00 a.m.  I admit that it’s convenient to mark 3:00 p.m. as the 12-hour awake point in my day.  I could easily adjust to do the same at 15:00.  In fact, my watch—yes, I still use one—has the 24-hour timescale in smaller print just inside the more legible 12-hour one.  I’m sure that we can all count to 24.  Wouldn’t it make sense, in the service of ending confusion about a.m./p.m.?  (Not to mention having to type in all those periods!)  The way we divide time is arbitrary.  The reason that we settled on twelve actually hearkens back to the official title of this blog, namely the ancient world.  The ancient Mesopotamians had a base-6 counting system, unlike our base-10.  When time came to be divided into hours, it was done on a base-6 system, giving us 12 hours of light and 12 hours of night.

Such ancient ideas as these are very difficult to change.  We can’t even seem to agree that if Daylight Saving Time is such a good idea, why don’t we keep it all year round?  I suspect most of us adjust to gradual change more easily than that sudden loss of an hour of sleep.  Even the added hour in the fall doesn’t make up for it.  If we can’t change something that’s obviously that flawed, how can we hope to agree that having 13 to 24 added to our clocks would be better?  Or maybe just round things down to 20, for our base-10 system?  Yes, hours would be longer but maybe we could negotiate fewer of them for work.  But I’m just dreaming here.  And it’s not even p.m. yet.

Saving What?

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It’s soul-tormenting.  For those who always awake in the dark, February starts to offer the hope of some early morning light.  It brings cheer and optimism into late winter.  We are awaking from the long night, only to be plunged back into darkness in an act of sheer, collective insanity.  For many weeks we’ll be tired all the time.  Less productive.  Automobile accidents will increase.  Finally, around mid-April, the early light will return.  Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I like Daylight Saving Time.  I see no logical reason, however, to set our clocks back in the fall.  What good does it do?  Gradual change is much easier on the human psyche, so why do we force a sudden shock to the system twice a year?  If the apocalypse ever actually happens it will be when we set our clocks forward.

Human hubris messes with time.  Many people simply accept the time shift as something we “have to do.” We don’t.  In the technological age there is no reason to continue what was initially a war-time effort to use light to increase production.  Hey, look, it didn’t prevent wars from happening.  All it causes are wicked huge yawns and their knock-on effects.  Time is a valuable commodity and yet we waste it twice annually, with abandon.  People as a group are a lethargic bunch.  The threat of war led the world to adopt a measure to shift light into the evening time, but for only part of the year.  Why not all the year?

When I commuted into New York City I often stood waiting for the bus in the dark.  Late February would come and some cheer at standing in the cold (there was no bus shelter) was possible with the faint streaks of dawn arriving before the bus, like the earth finally opening its sleepy eye.  March would come and I was once again in the dark.  Finally, about a month later the light would return.  Is it necessary to climb the same hill twice?  Can’t we just spring forward and leave it at that?  There will be lots of yawns at work tomorrow.  People will be careless while driving.  It may even lead to deaths.  There’s no reason to do this, but we keep on, as if it were some kind of divine command.  I’ve yet to meet one person—no wait, there was one—who thinks this system works.  Empty ritual is the worst kind.

Ritual Time

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Timeless, it is.  The internet I mean.  The ultimate 24/7.  No matter the time, day or night, it’s always here.  And that’s good because time’s about to change again.  Daylight Saving Time ends, for most of us, tonight.  Then a few short months later, it begins again, disrupting sleep, productivity, and good moods.  As this story on NPR shows, it really no longer serves any purpose and there’s a great will to change it.  But then politicians get involved.  So nothing really happens about it and we yawn and stretch and wish we were asleep as we dutifully move the hands forward or back, hoping we remember the correct direction.  So it goes with tradition.  Religions are filled with actions whose meanings were lost long ago.  We do them because we’re told to.

This particular futility always makes me ponder critical thinking.  Autocrats and others who enjoy authority don’t really encourage it.  Who wants the masses thinking “why am I doing this pointless thing?  Why can’t I do something that makes sense?”  I suspect that’s behind a lot of the decline in mainstream Christianity.  People are busy, frantic, and worried about getting everything done.  Why take an entire Sunday morning (and it takes all morning) of the precious two free days afforded on the weekend, and spend it doing something the same old way?  Religions, we as students learn, are inherently conservative.  Problem is the world outside is changing, and more and more rapidly.  Two day weekends seem hardly long enough and something’s gotta give.

Time is something we are powerless to control.  Change, as long observed in east Asian religions, is the way of things.  Changing clocks then, only to change them back later, is an effort to control that which controls us.  Many of us, I suspect, approach this pointless ritual with a literal sense of weariness.  There are other things we’d rather be doing.  And many more that we’re compelled to do.  Is this some kind of spiritual lesson or simply an exercise in futility?  How do you tell the difference?  Ritual, in the best of circumstances, is comforting.  It reassures us that things are progressing according to some kind of universal plan.  Changing clocks creates a glitch in those plans.  Darkness is about to get more aggressive for the next few months.  Politicians bungle around in the darkness too, powerless to alter that which we do, for once, have the ability to change for the better.

That Time Again

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Where’d it go?  I could swear I left an hour sitting right here on the table, and now it’s gone.  That’s the feeling of waking up the day of Daylight Saving Time.  Sure, it’ll stay light later now, but the mornings, when hope is most necessary, are once again dark.  It’s funny how we play with time.  I’ve known many people who love the end of Daylight Saving Time because of the illusion that they’ve gained another hour of sleep.  In fact, it’s just a deferred payment.  The great time-keeper in the sky won’t be cheated.  So—pardon my yawn—we’re adjusting again.  One of the great mysteries of this is that keeping Daylight Saving Time permanent has strong bi-partisan support in the US government.  It never becomes law, however, because riders are constantly attached to it, making one side or the other back out.  And so we all spend a couple weeks trying to get our circadian rhythms to adjust.  Again.

I’ve often wondered about the timing for this change.  Why Sunday morning?  In this nation that likes to pretend to be Christian, it’s a regular joke that folks in pre-pandemic times would miss church, having forgot to set their clocks ahead.  One incredibly busy Sunday in Edinburgh, my wife and I had missed church altogether.  I’m thinking it must’ve been in the final throes of getting my dissertation finished.  When supper-time rolled around we found we were out of some ingredients and we went to the local grocery to find, of all things, it was closed early.  It was only then that we had to stop and laugh at ourselves.  We’d just spent an entire day out of joint with time and didn’t even know it.  In pre-internet days it was possible for that to happen.

Most of our clocks now set themselves automatically.  I still wear an old-fashioned analogue watch.  I need to set it manually, which keeps me on my toes when Daylight Saving Time approaches.  O yes, and the clocks in the cars are off—they’re not wired in that way, being older models.  And the one on the microwave.  I can always use my phone for the accurately predetermined time on which we all agree to operate.  Even if the morning skies, which were starting to be light at six now stay dark until seven.  In another month we’ll catch up again.  And Daylight Saving Time, instead of being a strange intrusion, like most unwanted guests, will begin to feel like normal.

Winter Waiting

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The waiting, as Tom Petty knew, is the hardest part.  Along the slow turning of the wheel of the year it’s now light enough to go jogging before work.  That won’t last, however, because Daylight Saving Time is imminent and will set us back a month in the illumination department.  Also I haven’t been able to jog because the massive snowstorm we had a couple weeks back dumped over two feet of snow on the jogging trail and it hasn’t melted yet.  I miss it.  The jogging, I mean.  I’ve become one of those people who never the leave the house and I see how difficult it is just waiting.  Waiting for the snow to melt.  Waiting for the vaccine.  Waiting for the light.

I’m no psychologist, but I have to wonder if that isn’t one of the greatest stresses faced by the many stir-crazy people who’ve been shut-ins for pretty much a year now.  For us this snowstorm took away the little mobility we had.  Getting out daily for a constitutional put me in touch with nature, at least.  Now nature is under a thick, crusty white blanket, slumbering away.  But the birds have begun to return.  With their avian wisdom they’ve seen the end of winter.  Suddenly this past Wednesday they were here, bringing hope in their wings.  Birds have long been symbols of freedom—we’ve got a couple bald eagles in the neighborhood, reminding me of that.  A far more ancient association was that between the bird and the human soul.  The ability to soar.

We may still be mired in winter, but time is inexorable.  Relentless.  As the globe wobbles recklessly back toward the warmer seasons we need to take responsibility for our part in global warming.  Ironically these freak storms are the result of an overall warming trend.  The weakening of the jet stream that allows cold northern air to drop snow in Texas and storms to cover much of the rest of us all at the same time.  The pandemic has helped clear the air a bit.  At least we’ve rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, and we’ll try to begin undoing the damage to our planet that the last four years introduced.  It will take some time, of course.  By now we should be experts in biding our time.  The snow will melt.  The light will continue to grow.  I will get back out on that jogging path again.  But for now we wait.

Is It Really Saving?

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Daylight Saving Time has begun.  Or ended, I can never keep track of which.  All I know is that when I’m supposed to being enjoying another hour abed my mind wakes up at the usual time on a weekend only to find it’s even earlier than I’m accustomed to.  I ceased being able to sleep in when the commuting life began.  From where we lived in New Jersey I had to catch a bus well before 6 a.m. daily to get to New York.  Doing this for seven years set a pattern that I still find impossible to break and so I keep apologizing to my associates that no, I can’t attend evening meetings.  The morning after I can’t sleep in.  And then we change the clocks.

Many of us are creatures of habit.  Twice a year we needlessly disrupt our routines so we can “save daylight.”  What difference does it make when you’re staring at a screen all the time anyway?  Now it gets dark even earlier in the evening.  Well, that part I don’t mind so much.  I feel less abnormal when it’s dark as I get ready for bed.  An hour isn’t enough, however, to make it light when I awake.  The daylight will now last about as long as work does.  We’ve entered the darker half of the year.  Of course, yesterday was Halloween and we’re now facing All Saints and All Souls and el Día de los Muertos.  These are not all the same thing, for religion is very good at parsing things.  Still, who can help but suppress a yawn?

We’re supposed to be well rested but in reality we’re disoriented.  I’ve read that congress has been trying for years to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.  This has bipartisan support, but politicians, being what they are, keep on inserting riders that the other side doesn’t like so we continue the pointless ritual.  I know writers who stay up late to dedicate time to their craft.  Since I’m awake early I guess I’m simply picking up where they’re leaving off.  There are few interruptions at 2:00 a.m.  Soon, I know, I’ll get back into the swing of things and I’ll eventually be able to sleep in to three.  Then when March rolls around the gatekeeper will demand toll.  We’ll lose that hour we were so freely given last night.  But some of us will be tired all the time anyway.

The Halloween

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Halloween seems especially portentous this year.  Some of us thrive in this introduction to what was a major set of Christian holidays that encompassed many pagan traditions.  The lynchpin was All Saints Day (All Hallows), which in good Christian fashion upheld its favorite sons (and a few daughters) to remind the rest of us what a sorry lot of humanity we are.  Followed by the more democratic All Souls Day where the vestments went from white to black, it was preceded by Halloween.  Through mostly Celtic additions from Samhain, the first of the three days became decidedly spooky and came to be a commercial holiday.  There’s more to it than that, of course, but we all know Halloween.

This year a number of other phenomena are converging on today.  Not only is it a full moon, but a famed blue moon—the second full moon this month.  It feel like something could happen.  And if that weren’t exciting enough the powers that be have decided to end Daylight Saving Time tonight (well, technically tomorrow morning).  And Tuesday is the most importation election day in the history of our nation, when we decide whether to retain democracy or become a monarchy.  Seems like a strange confluence of phenomena.  Meanwhile, outdoors a pandemic rages and some locations have had early snowfalls.  The last of what had been Hurricane Zeta blew through here yesterday.  Who needs Halloween to be scared?

For some years I’ve been contemplating the spirituality of Halloween.  We live in a death-denying culture while knowing full well we all die.  Halloween has become a holiday when we can think about it openly.  Pretend we’re someone/something we’re not.  Perhaps, if we’re lucky, we might learn something from it.  It has become a boon for horror films, but they’ve been successfully spread through the rest of the year as well.  There’s plenty to be frightened of in July and January too.  Still, there’s something about Halloween.  Some of my earliest memories are of this particular holiday.  Poor as we were, we always had costumes for the day.  I remember sitting on the school bus, wearing a mask, thinking that nobody knew who I was, and I could really be the hero or villain that my costume suggested that year.  Now we wear masks all the time and we’re frightened every day.  Halloween is coming along with a blue moon this year.  There must be some significance to that.

Walnuts

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The walnuts are always the first to turn.  At least around here they are.  Their yellow leaves began to litter the bike path in August.  Their nuts can be quite a hazard to a jogger if it’s not quite light.  Still jacketed with their spherical rind, an unexpected foot landing on one can lead to a rolled ankle or even a fall on the pea gravel.  Such incidents led me to wait until it’s light enough to see clearly before going out for a jog.  You see, I like to exercise before starting work, so I jog at first light.  In June this can mean heading out even before five if the weather’s clear.  Since I start work around 6:30 this is a comfortable time to go.  Nobody else is on the bike path then.  And with Covid lurking, that’s a good thing.

The earliest sunrise comes about a week before the summer solstice.  By the time summer officially begins I already have to delay my jog slightly.  This is one of the great disappointments about Daylight Saving Time.  After winter’s long darkness, it starts to get light in the morning and I think to myself “I’ll soon be able to jog before work again,” but then we set the clocks back and set sunrise progress back by another month.  During the darkling months of the year I have to jog at lunchtime.  The changing walnuts always warn me that such a time is drawing near.  Already here in early September I’m getting back late for my usual work time since the sun is reluctant to throw its first crepuscular rays over the brow of the hill before six a.m.  The problem with this is that many more people are out on the bike trail at six than I ever see at five.  And often they don’t care to share.

There are a couple of older guys who walk abreast, taking up pretty much the whole trail every day now.  They hear me coming, look back, but like the marching band in “American Pie,” refuse to yield.  Single file for them is a sign of weakness.  I have to divert into the dew-soaked grass on chilly mornings to get around them with my now-wet feet.  I long for the days when I could easily jog before they even think of heading out to the trail.  The solitude of half-light.  The walnuts are the prophets of the tree world, however.  Their fruit is both nutritious and dangerous.  Scattered across the trail in the persistent dusk of a cloudy morning, they’re both a hazard and a warning.  And it’s a sign that the morning jog may already have to wait until mid-May to reappear.

Coincidentally

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I hope I never become too sensible not to pay attention to coincidences.  With the death of Max von Sydow falling the same week as the time change, the full moon, and Friday the thirteenth, I’m left feeling a little vulnerable.  I mean, what do we do now that the Exorcist is gone?  A couple days ago, when the moon was full—the last full moon before the vernal equinox—I awoke before 3:00 a.m.  Thinking Daylight Saving Time would have me groping for a few extra minutes abed, instead I found myself wide awake at the hour when monsters are thought to be afoot.  As I put my feet to the floor I saw the brilliant lunar light beating through the blinds like midday.  It was remarkable how very light it was.

A bipartisan bill has been introduced in congress to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.  Of course, getting any law passed without numerous riders and bickering is unlikely, but I do wish they’d get on with it.  That having been written, the time shift has been remarkably easy on me so far this year.  Perhaps those of us regularly awake in the dead of night adjust a little more quickly.  Keeping out of New York with the coronavirus lurking, I’d rather deal with my own monsters anyway.  I remember my amazement at seeing Max von Sydow unchanged from Fr. Merrin to Dr. Naehring.  Then I looked up just how much makeup the Exorcist had to have to age himself several decades.  He was a young man when The Exorcist was filmed.  At this time of day anything is believable.

Friday the thirteenth is a bit of lore grown from Christianity.  Friday was inauspicious because of Good Friday and the thirteenth lot fell on Judas, who, along with the others, made thirteen.  It was as if some demon were afoot on such Fridays.  These bits of Christian lore made their way into popular culture and then crept into horror films.  A good deal of Nightmares with the Bible revolves around The Exorcist.  So I sit here before sunrise with a bit of just-past full moon shining in, not too tired from losing an hour on Sunday.  It’s not difficult to think of scary things at this time of night.  Of course, demons traditionally come out around 3:00 a.m.  This week has been like that.  And without Max von Sydow, we want to be very cautious around demons.

Back to Normal

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The western philosophical tradition is built on the idea that permanence is reality.  From the Greek philosophers on, the idea has been to identify the basic, unchanging building blocks of reality to get at what’s really real.  The eastern philosophical system posits that change is reality.  Permanence is illusion, and that which we think of as unchanging is a deceptive projection of our own minds.  This dichotomy keeps coming back to me when things change and I keep waiting for them to go back to “the old way” or “the usual way.”  Most recently, for example, the shift to or from (I can never remember which) Daylight Saving Time.  This was followed closely by a mandated trip to San Diego, three time zones away, that lasted five days.  While there I met with potential authors later into the evening than I generally stay up on eastern time.  Now that I’m back home I keep waiting for things to go back to the way they were.

My response to all of this is to wonder if maybe I have the wrong philosophical disposition.  Problem is, the entire western world is built on the proposition that permanence is reality.  The things that worry us are, in eastern thinking, part of the constantly changing flux of reality.  While away from the usual constant connectivity of life at home, bills still come electronically.  Websites ask you for passwords that, like eastern thought, are constantly changing.  I play along, even to the point of “buying” property so that it will always be mine.  Right now lots of things are up in the air in the western world—the future of democracy itself is uncertain—and I keep waiting for things to get back to normal.

Part of the problem is that I keep too busy.  It is easier for me to maintain this illusion if I slow down and have time to think it through.  Things change too quickly for that, however.  Using time as a pole star to navigate this constantly heaving sea, I’ve become a little confused about my longitude.  I’m settling back into eastern time at the new hour they tell me that it is, but I feel as though I’ve left lots of things behind.  I’ve had a little time off work over the holiday and there’s a tremendous amount of change awaiting me once I fire the laptop up again.  I want to go back to where I was before I boarded that plane, back before I “gained” an hour.  Back before I had to learn everything you need to know to “buy” a house.  I look to the east and nod.

Daylight Saving Time Zone

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One or two of you out there—you know who you are—put yourselves through reading my musings on a daily basis.  I haven’t missed a post in nearly a decade, but travel always complicates things.  Yes, it’s that time of year again—I’m on my way to AAR/SBL.  The American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting is the trade show of the guild.  This year we’re meeting in San Diego, California.  The hope of many of us is that it’ll be sunny and warm.  Last year, of course, I missed the conference for the first time, exchanging the Denver Hilton for a night on the floor of Newark’s Liberty Airport.  This year I’m flying out of a different venue—one where egress is possible in the case of snow.

I always like to post a reminder to the faithful few that normal service on this blog may be interrupted.  One never knows what might happen when away from the regular routine.  And three time zones will surely wreak havoc with circadian rhythms that haven’t yet caught up with the end of Daylight Saving Time.  Or is it the beginning of Daylight Saving Time?  It makes no difference, because it lead to lack of normal sleep, no matter what we call it.  In any case, San Diego may make usual posting unusual.  At the very least it’ll be a few hours off.  I’ve become a creature of habit, posting my thoughts between six and seven on weekdays.  On weekends I’m up just as early, but I give the web a chance to sleep in.

These annual meetings are exhausting when you go on behalf of a publisher.  Unlike the leisurely experience of a paying customer, you don’t get to go back to your room for a nap, or even to sleep in.  Every year colleagues ask me to receptions but I decline because every day is a school day.  And I have appointments from 8:30 until 6:30 daily.  Sometimes even later.  You, my gentle reader, have been given advance notice.  I’ll try to continue my daily chronicle of life inside this particular head as thousands of scholars of religion mill about, wondering about the answers to the big questions.  Right now the big question is whether I’ve packed everything I’ll need.  I’ll gain three hours on the way out, but I have to leave them at the desk when I get back.  Along the way I’ll scatter posts like breadcrumbs to help me find my way home.

The Rules of Waiting

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Tom Petty must’ve been a commuter.  On a winter’s morning after switching to Daylight Saving Time, waiting is the indeed the hardest part.  For a bus, that is.  In the dark.  The saving grace is that humans are rule-makers.  Before I even began commuting into New York I’d been instructed in the etiquette.  Those who get there first leave some kind of avatar—a briefcase, an umbrella, a lunch box—in their place in line and then sit in their cars.  Being the paranoid sort, and also thinking myself tough, I’ve always just stood at my place as the chill wind finds its way down my collar and then buffets me almost off of my feet.  With the time-change, however, I decided to do like the commuters do.  I walked out to the line of objects to find one widely separated from the others.  Being a law-abider, I put my lunch down after the errant water bottle.

“Hey,” a stranger called me on my way back to my car.  “Somebody just left that water bottle—you should move your bag up next to the backpack.”  Thanking him, I did so.  Not only was this person I didn’t know watching me in the dark, but he was also keeping the rules.  Indeed, when the bus crested the hill and commuters lined up next to their possessions, the water bottle remained unclaimed.  It was still there fourteen hours later when I got off the returning bus.  Now, I’m not a big fan of anarchy, but this incident demonstrates just how inclined we are toward civil behavior.  There’s no bus stop police force to ensure nobody jumps line.  Even at the Port Authority waiting in the queue at the end of the day the rules are mostly self-governing.  Those who don’t obey are scolded by their peers and generally comply.

There’s a natural sort of ethic among those who catch the bus before 5 a.m.  We’ve all been awake earlier than nature would seem to dictate.  We’re in a dark, isolated location outside town.  We look out for one another, realizing that any one of us might easily lose our place in line should the rules break down.  I was struck by the kindness of this caliginous stranger.  Or perhaps it was just his love of order.  Had my representation been out of place, other commuters might’ve grown confused.  The system might’ve broken down.  The last thing anyone wants is chaos before cock-crow.  I decided to interpret it as kindness, however, as I made my way back to my car to put on Tom Petty to face the hardest part.

Time Saving

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As we suffer through another pointless Daylight Saving Time, I’m thinking of rituals that have lost their meaning.  Life is full of them.  We do things because we’ve always done them this way and even when they become harmful because of the way lifestyles change (auto accidents, for example, increase after shorting people of an hour’s sleep) we can’t seem to let go.  DST alone should’ve been enough to convince those who claimed religion would simply go away when science kicked in that they are wrong.  This is one reason that I’ve always found the origins of ideas fascinating.  Why did people believe this?  Why did they do this?  What started this whole process?  (Just to be clear, I’m not asking this about DST; I’ve written about that before.)

We can’t know the ultimate origins of religion.  I’ve suggested in the past that what we would term religious behavior has clear origins in the behavior of animals.  A somewhat fully developed consciousness provides incentive to rationalize such behavior.  The earliest organized religion of which we know involved state functionaries (priests) supporting, probably for sincerely believed reasons, the “secular” government.  Kings and priests needed each other and people quickly conformed.  Even when those on the inside came to realize that they were merely pretending, they kept on doing so.  It was too late (or if DST, too early) to change anything, so the mascarade continued.  Tracing the history of religious ideas reveals perhaps more than we want to know.  And human beings are natural actors.

Once, while in a restaurant, I sat near the kitchen.  The smiling servers, as they neared that portal lost their smiles and harried looks came to their faces as they told frantic cooks what the couple at table eight wanted.  Yet they continued to pretend they were happy when at table-side.  Or think of work with its “public facing” information that is inevitably different from what is known by those on the inside of the company.  Actors.  We’re all actors.  Perhaps it’s the price to pay for living in a civilization.  If we stopped to think about why we’re doing something as inane as pretending five o’clock is now six o’clock, or even that all people are the same and should be at work between nine and five, society could not stand the scrutiny.  Anarchy would erupt in the streets.  We should be thankful that people don’t think about these things too deeply.  Or, then again, maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night.

Symbolic Delays

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Weather affects more than the Psalms, of course.  With all the hype of the latest winter storm things were closed or delayed before any accumulation even started.  Now I’ll admit up front that I’m a fan of snow days; we dutifully trudge to our desk jobs as if we’re doing something vital when many of us are really just trying to make money for the man.  A snow day’s a little unplanned levity in our lives when staying off the roads seems like a good idea.  It’s one of life’s guilty pleasures.  Of course, the dreaded delayed opening brings its own set of issues.  You can’t sleep in unless it’s announced the night before, and once you’re up your mind heads to work anyway.  Working remotely, alas, means you have no excuse, no matter what the weather.

Snow is a great symbol.  I don’t mean its whiteness and purity—there are plenty of white things that aren’t pure.  No, I mean it’s a great symbol in its ability to control people.  We don’t like rain, although we understand its necessity.  Snow, however, fills us with a childlike wonder.  Anticipation.  Unlike a winter rain, it can be fun to play in.  It covers everything.  The suggestion of a blanket ironically makes us feel warm, even as the temperature dips below freezing.  But for me the most potent symbol is light.  I awake early, even on snow days.  As I make my way downstairs in the dark, it’s immediately evident when snow covers everything because the sky is lighter than it should be this time of day.  Whatever light’s trapped below the clouds reflects off the snow creating a luminosity that’s almost otherworldly in its calm.  It doesn’t last too long for the sun is rising earlier, at least it is until our pointless time change, but for a few hours we’re in the midst of an unnatural light.

Darkness is far too prevalent.  We know that someday even our mighty sun will use up all its fuel.  We crave the light for it’s limited.  Days are noticeably longer now than they were at the start of December.  Those few moments of serenity before the sun comes up, when the snow produces what seems like its own light, are among the most tranquil of life.  Before the plows begin scraping metal against asphalt, hoping for a snow day while wrapped in a fleece throw, face clouding the chilly window before it.  Yes, it’s a powerful symbol.  Even if the internet means work awaits just as usual.  

The Myth of the Extra Hour

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The selling point of an extra hour of sleep is, unfortunately, a myth.  I’m not talking about young people who can sleep on demand, but your average, everyday working body who adheres to a schedule set by the man.  Like many Americans I probably don’t get enough sleep.  Long years of habit are hard to break, and besides, I still have to commute into New York City.  Not every day, but every couple of weeks.  Still, my sleep-deprived brain knows that means awaking early on those days and since getting up extra-early is hard, why not maintain the status quo ante?  Habitual early risers don’t really benefit from setting the clocks back.  You see, you’re never given something without it being taken away again elsewhere.

Humans can’t seem to help themselves from messing with nature.  There’s always something to do on the farm, and other creatures don’t keep clocks.  Interestingly, standardized time (instead of the more natural local time) only came into being with the railroad.  Trains were scarce and to make sure those down the line didn’t miss one, time had to be synchronized.  Even earlier, the process of navigating the oceans required knowing what time it was back home—local time could be determined by the sun—to determine one’s longitude.   With railways, however, the nine-to-five could become the accepted norm so that business could be conducted and time could be divided into profitable and domestic.  And everyone knows which one is more lucrative.

No doubt some will wake this morning well rested.  Others will have stayed up later, knowing they’d have an extra hour this morning.  For the rest of us, biology moves us along the same trajectory it’d been keeping ever since March.  Daylight Saving Time could be instituted all year, you know.  When we set the clocks back in March we could just keep them there.  The slow, steady rhythms of time would adjust.  Yes, the gods of Greenwich would be annoyed, but mean time could mean time that is useable.  The modern commuter lives by the clock.  Work depended on that train or bus or camel.  You don’t want to miss it.  And if you think camels are an odd addition to the list, it could be that the present writer isn’t getting enough sleep.  No matter what longitude, or mass transit schedule, nothing beats a good night’s sleep.  And changing clocks doesn’t help.