Have you ever seen anything in your life that has truly left a mark on you… beautiful sunsets, the smell of a woman passing you or the life of a baby… what about a clock? Now there are a lot of beautiful clocks in this world and this one known as “Le Défenseur du Temps”, the Defender of Time, was created by Jacques Monestier, the crazy Frenchman. It depicts a man defending against a crab, a dragon and a rooster which represent earth, wind and water. It’s a beautiful and amazing clock that four times per day would have all of them come up to him and attack him – what an interesting idea. But sadly it’s sitting there rusting, nothing to be done with it. I won’t be able to hear what it sounded like as it fell in to disrepair in 2003, around that wonderful time when Britney Spears was at the top of her fame and everybody was wearing snap bracelets. But hey, what can you do? I wish I could see it working again someday.

Me and Rachael spent a couple of minutes looking intently at this clock just trying to figure out this rustic beauty. It radiates something, kind of like looking at an old abandoned train station – you knew that there was a lot of working parts with the hustle and bustle but no longer. There is a story to those abandoned train stations just like in this clock. Sometimes things just get forgotten in this world while we live in a consumption society and throw everything away …… But I love this clock.   

I’m happy I went to Paris to see it, it’s so secure and so beautiful in this idea and the simple fact that it’s rusting away, an empty shell of itself even leads to a more poetic idea that time is no longer being watched by this man, and God help us if time is being watched by us as people with an attention span closer to a nat than to God. I really do hope everybody who meets us gets a chance to see this beautiful clock before they tear it down.

I love you all and I’ll see you on the next post!

Dane