Time is one of the hardest intangibles to fathom. It can feel both fleeting and unending; perceptively tied to specific places and conditions, yet also entirely untethered by context. With the advent of industrialization nearly four centuries ago-electric light "allowing" us to operate beyond the limitations of natural, seasonal rhythms-the perception of time itself accelerated.
Time is life-time, and increasingly young adolescents want to determine how their lives are personally spent. The outcome for parents is that they can feel rushed by youthful demands, while it can take more time for them to get what they requested.
Did someone with spatial-sequence synaesthesia design the calendar app on mobile phones? Because that's how time and dates look in my brain. If you say a date to me, that day appears in a grid diagram in my head, and it shows if that box is already imprinted with a holiday, event or someone's birthday. Public holidays and special events like Christmas and Easter are already imprinted for the year, and the diagram goes backwards to about 100,000BC
Happy Time operates as a small, conceptual sculpture for the wrist, offering a slowed, ambiguous experience of duration. At first glance, the watch reads as almost empty. Numerals and hands on the dial are replaced by a black smiley face that rotates slowly, completing a full turn once every hour, while a small silver dot marks a twelve-hour cycle. This minimal design provides only the loosest indication of passing time, resisting precision by design.
Freya, the novel's protagonist, has never swum in the ocean, and over the course of the morning she learns how. She discovers that she can dive under a swell, "feel the tug of the wave's underturn," and shoot up when it has passed; that she can swim fast up waves that are about to break, then "crash through their crests and fall down their backsides";
I've spent years observing French people and how life is lived here. I am fascinated by French history and culture, from the arts to national characteristics. For instance (and I'm being general here, obviously there are exceptions) French people hate to be wrong about anything and will insist "I never said that" if they give you duff information. They know that they were wrong, will laugh when you point out that actually there are witnesses to what they said,
Sam sits in his noisy apartment, surrounded by the distractions of his digital life. His research is scattered across a dozen tabs. He writes a sentence, then deletes it. Doubt creeps in: "Is this the right way to start?" Before long, he's scrolling through social media, half-heartedly checking his email, and staring at his chaotic desk-a mirror of his cluttered mind. After two hours, he has little to show for it but frustration and dread.
