i remember my mum's wonderful story of teasing her little sister by telling her that time was also going metric: so there would be 10 hours in a day, 10 minutes in an hour and so on.
what i always wondered was, why 60 with time. why 60 seconds and 60 minutes? is it a natural division or did someone decide on that number?
i could be a cynic and say that a minute is the time it takes you to smoke 1/5 of a cigarette, or really enjoy the first hoppy mouthful of a beer.
or i could say that a minute is the only time we have real control over. a second can be too fast to take aything in. an hour tends to find you (sorry, me) asleep. but if you don't have an answer inside a minute, you don't have an answer. also, you need a minute to take in good or bad news.
and minutes to me mean train times: 10:57, 8:46, 9:08. i set my watch a minute ahead of time to fool myself - the cleverest thing a person ever thought of. but it works! i'm always on time at work - 11:10. 9:02, or 9:23!
but minutes are about love, as someone already said. seconds click by on the dashboard clock. who can act in a second?! you need a minute to take a hand, to marvel at its warmth or its coolth. and you need a minute to understand that kisses are measured by the time it takes for a curfew to pass, or the time it takes for a resolve to grow weak.
and finally, minutes are how we remember things. no one memory lasts a second or an hour. maybe because minutes are flexible, we can remember within them. or we have enough time to fabricate our excuses by using them. who wants the honesty of a second? the lugubriousness of an hour? minutes are the only period we can measure emotions by.
hope you're all well.
