The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 7: October 13

Today I spun tops with my son. We did this for six straight hours. So much of the pleasure of hanging out with children is successfully losing yourself, if only for a minute or two, in the activity with which you’re both engaged. Suddenly, I am drawing a shoe that makes us both happy. The cogs of the day smoothly and quickly turn. Once I’ve finished the shoe, however, I am back to wondering — how can this day not mostly involve my waiting for it to be over? Yet when this day has ended my child will be older and I will be nearer to dead. Why should I wish for this to happen any sooner than it already will?

But I genuinely had fun spinning tops with my son. I did not have to concentrate so hard in order to effortlessly enjoy myself, and to forget the admittedly stupid things that otherwise preoccupied me. I wondered what it was about tops, and why they were so engrossing, and why spinning them so relaxed me. After I put my son to bed, I decided to watch a documentary about famed modern designer couple Charles and Ray Eames. I thought theirs would be the story of a happy marriage (it wasn’t entirely). I thought a movie about their lives would be like watching The Bachelorette finale but with better furniture. In this documentary, a short film made by Charles is mentioned, a film called — I couldn’t believe it—Tops. The film is all about tops and the eternal appeal of tops. I found the film on YouTube, but I didn’t watch it. It was late and I was tired. Besides, I knew what I needed to know about tops, i.e., that one of the most respected design minds of the twentieth century had validated, on film, my experience. The Eameses were into the complex beauty of the everyday object. (“The Eameses saw beauty in everyday objects, like the tumbleweed they hung from their living room ceiling.”) A day, like a top, can be an everyday object. A day, like a top, can be a time-skewing device. A day can also move downward, not only across, as it spins.