Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. The lad you
Speaker 1: are here, Let's get into it. Along the north bank
Speaker 1: where gray stones met bright water, a walk with the
Speaker 1: unhurried step of the retired, one hand curled round the
Speaker 1: warm wooden head of my walking stick, the other tucked
Speaker 1: deep into the pocket of a faded navy coat. Even
Speaker 1: early in spring, the light had a kind of newness.
Speaker 1: You could almost taste soft and brisk ap of the canal,
Speaker 1: as the wind brought the scent of damp earth and
Speaker 1: rising bread. For forty years, maybe more, I traced the
Speaker 1: same route, past the sullen red shutters of the abandoned tannery,
Speaker 1: over a bridge five whose bricks had grown as shiny
Speaker 1: and creased as an old man's knuckles, Past the ocutiled bakery,
Speaker 1: where massesskrowdits peered through flower dusted glass every sunrise. Next
Speaker 1: came the post with bright green stamped with the city's
Speaker 1: cress lackered inscriptions, spelling out eighteen ninety seven, with all
Speaker 1: the original pride, though its mouth now rattled slightly on
Speaker 1: cold days. My own house stood on the next lane,
Speaker 1: and seen but always known, just beyond the linden trees,
Speaker 1: leaning out over the path. The walk was its own pleasure,
Speaker 1: a sword of living, proof of reliability, which is precisely
Speaker 1: why I stopped that March morning, half thumping, mild alarm,
Speaker 1: mostly curiosity, when my eyes caught a detail that sat
Speaker 1: wrong upon the familiar which between the milliners and the
Speaker 1: news agents, right where I was certain there had always
Speaker 1: been a narrow, empty window, stubbornly displaying nothing but a
Speaker 1: lays curtained darkness. Then now appeared a shop with the
Speaker 1: stone facade and lettering in gold leaf ams and sun's horology.
Speaker 1: The words arched proudly over the jaw. The glass was clean,
Speaker 1: yet not new, paneled with gentle ripples the way old
Speaker 1: glass distorts its view of the world. The sign looked
Speaker 1: hand painted to a golden clock faced cradle by pale
Speaker 1: blue scroll walks so deliberate it might have come from
Speaker 1: some careful masters brush fifty years before. I stood frozen
Speaker 1: in the rhythm of my walk, count in details as
Speaker 1: if confirming a machine had not skipped to sprocket. The
Speaker 1: bricks were rounding the sharp friend were not newly mortared. Rather,
Speaker 1: the echoed doors of the street, softened by rain, moss,
Speaker 1: nibbling at their edges. It number fourteen sat nestled in
Speaker 1: an enamel plaque whose deep indiger had pale ruggedly with
Speaker 1: the sun inside. The window displayimote with things I had
Speaker 1: never quite seen. Told bat mantel clocks of cherry walnut,
Speaker 1: pendulum's wound with thin bronze wire. A clockface was strange
Speaker 1: overlapping dials like miniature planetary orbits. Another case filled with
Speaker 1: dozens of pocket watches, arrayed like Grarecin's a top of
Speaker 1: velvet cloth. None were modern, but neither were they quite antique.
Speaker 1: The seconds hands on the clock swung with a deliberate,
Speaker 1: unhurried motion. I realized after half a minute of watching
Speaker 1: that their ticking wasn't mismatched, but composed. Teach clockstick fell
Speaker 1: in harmony with the one beside it, as if a
Speaker 1: choir of metal throats had tuned themselves to a single
Speaker 1: shifting cadence. The bakery unchange still bore the scent of
Speaker 1: Ryan's sartuary. The postbooks waited exactly where it always had.
Speaker 1: The shops around seemed just as they should. Only the
Speaker 1: small wonder clockmakers so confidently embedded that if he glanced carelessly,
Speaker 1: you believe it had always lived here to find memory.
Speaker 1: Had I been unobservant even once in all these years?
Speaker 1: Surely not the spot had been empty, a window boarded
Speaker 1: up in winter, curtains drawn. I was sure of it.
Speaker 1: And yet here it was. The bones of the street
Speaker 1: had not shifted, but something quietly had slipped between the stones.
Speaker 1: I did not go inside, not out of fear, but
Speaker 1: a reluctance to disturb perfection. I made a note in
Speaker 1: the way of a man who solves problems by attending
Speaker 1: to details. Amsl and sons, clock sharp north bank. But
Speaker 1: what bakriy and musician signed w's lash gold face odd clocks,
Speaker 1: all taking for years, missed old stones like neighbors. I
Speaker 1: stood a moment longer, letting the rhythm of the clocks
Speaker 1: follow me into the streets hush, then continued home routine.
Speaker 1: I suppose is what makes the city comprehensible with so
Speaker 1: I often toldly now as we share coffee in the mornings.
Speaker 1: When you grow up circle the same blocks, the world
Speaker 1: becomes a kind of map in your head. Every iron
Speaker 1: ballard and trickling drink grows familiar, as much a part
Speaker 1: of your day as the way from the man who
Speaker 1: rows the garbage barge down Canal eight. My name Victor Glass,
Speaker 1: retired engineer, if such titles ever truly retire, still appears
Speaker 1: in the brass directory played outside the apartment as share
Speaker 1: with dust, happy solitude and a growing stack of field notebooks.
Speaker 1: To most, I'm the fellow with the spectacles slightly bowed
Speaker 1: from years overdrawing boards, who walks the canal with a
Speaker 1: surveyor's precision. Bridge to post books, post books to bakery,
Speaker 1: bakery to south Bank by way of bridge cheven olopas
Speaker 1: fixed as the city's church bells, Lyna always meets me
Speaker 1: at the riverside cafe, insisting I order had that old
Speaker 1: fashioned dark roast, splash of honey or else. Endure her
Speaker 1: teasing about stubbornness. She's kept her post as skulwistress and
Speaker 1: part time canal historians since the flood of ninety three
Speaker 1: and cannot argue any city official over the true color
Speaker 1: of a century old painterm our world, This tangle of
Speaker 1: cobblestones and water is nothing if not jealous of its heritage.
Speaker 1: Any shop that opens submits to months of neighborhood debate.
Speaker 1: Facades must resemble their grandparents and locals Mark each absentee
Speaker 1: window or transplanted lump post enough to dinner conversation. Even
Speaker 1: the musicians Johann and Alise Trins from the next district
Speaker 1: of Anota, as before shifting a usual playing spot violin
Speaker 1: and clarinet, mapped out the alleys and harmonies that change
Speaker 1: with the light. I cannot claim to remember every detail
Speaker 1: of every passing day, but certain facts were until this
Speaker 1: week as given as gravity. Between the bakery and the
Speaker 1: news agent. There had never been a clockmaker's not in
Speaker 1: the map I keep in my head, not in the
Speaker 1: charcoal sketches I make after each walk. A habit of
Speaker 1: cried during convalescents years ago to shop in an inch
Speaker 1: of memory, not in the notepads bound in red and blue,
Speaker 1: stacked in chronological order on my livne room shelf. My
Speaker 1: gaze wandered to those records as I sat that evening
Speaker 1: coffee cooling. As I leaf through pages marked sprin cleaning
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen in North Canal Walk and autumn storm, bakery
Speaker 1: window cracked repairs by missus Kr, I check each sketch
Speaker 1: of notation for that stretch of the bank. There was
Speaker 1: a drawing of the post books of sun faded still
Speaker 1: green birds nest in late may, a water damaged to
Speaker 1: entry of a new stick of gingerbread, a Cravitz, even
Speaker 1: a rough plan of the building's mill in a empty window,
Speaker 1: news agent, no Ansel and Sons, no watchmaker sign, no
Speaker 1: gold leaf clock face standing at attention between neighbors. I
Speaker 1: considered fleeingly the possibility of a slip in my own mind.
Speaker 1: But engineers trust evidence. My walks were regular every week,
Speaker 1: sometimes more. The bakery had been there for decades, and
Speaker 1: the newt agent well, I remembered the Dames ses Scotland's
Speaker 1: retirement shrunk the newspapers down to two shelves. The empty
Speaker 1: window had always caught my eye a little sad for
Speaker 1: its lack of purpose. So how does the clockmaker's, fully
Speaker 1: formed and seamless appear where there had long been only lost?
Speaker 1: The city resists change, I had to ask myself. Had
Speaker 1: I grown so complaisance, a wedded to routine that an
Speaker 1: entire shop at presents its people its trade could slip
Speaker 1: by me as easily as a trick of afternoon sun
Speaker 1: along the canal water That night, I wrote in my
Speaker 1: law book, cited Ansel and Sons. Today impossible but real.
Speaker 1: Beneath the question, I found nothing to prove the negative,
Speaker 1: only a tiny growing it, a curiosity not of absence,
Speaker 1: but of contradiction, And I resolved that by morning someone
Speaker 1: would have to confirm or deny what I alone had spotted.
Speaker 1: Lena always arrived first coach, herd, buff with precise economy,
Speaker 1: cheeks flushed by winter, and the satisfaction of having argued
Speaker 1: a bus fare with the driver. As I bit into
Speaker 1: a stale, reasoned bahn, I described the shop and careful
Speaker 1: systematic detail its sign. It's oddly howmoneous clocks his position
Speaker 1: in the robe, where nothing so fine or so bright
Speaker 1: had stood from my remembered years. I expected confusion. I wanted,
Speaker 1: in truth, a little bit of commiseration from someone as
Speaker 1: meticulous as myself. Instead, Lena gave me a look of
Speaker 1: amusement so gently pitying I almost laughed. Amsl and sons,
Speaker 1: she repeated, as if reminding me of a familiar neighbor.
Speaker 1: They've serviced all or skull clocks for as long as
Speaker 1: I've taught. The janitor Old Anka always grumbles about their bills.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's just after the post books on the
Speaker 1: North Bank. Where else she gestured with hespoon, slicing the air,
Speaker 1: drawing a map as vivid and certain as the one
Speaker 1: in my memory, You know, the one with the blue
Speaker 1: enamel door handle. My knee still swears by the cookoo clocks.
Speaker 1: I prowed further, describing the shot features. Lena's recollection was unwavering.
Speaker 1: They're the only ones who undersigned the clock tower in
Speaker 1: the old Assembly Hall. Amsel apprentices used to deliver repairs
Speaker 1: by wheelbarrow across the square. You must have read their
Speaker 1: sign a thousand times. I'm convinced. I excused myself and
Speaker 1: saw up Paval. The green groves were a fond of
Speaker 1: neighborhood trivia. If ever, there was one Pavel with stocking
Speaker 1: sacks of potatoes, his thick fingers, quick but gentle Ansel Hey,
Speaker 1: Ansel himself sold me my wedding watch, he said, an
Speaker 1: echo of pride in his voice. That was my Julie
Speaker 1: was alive, So at least forty years back. Funny old
Speaker 1: man used to hold those great pendulum clocks cost A
Speaker 1: Canal with his lads, always whistling. The details matched the location,
Speaker 1: the shop's age. It were all in the city's repairman's meadows.
Speaker 1: I pressed him. You're certain it's always been ere He frowned.
Speaker 1: Of course, Victor, you old goose as part of the scenery.
Speaker 1: Even before missus Kravitz took over the bakery, they resold
Speaker 1: as the bridges that family. I resolved to walk the
Speaker 1: entire canal circuit twice, if needed, were tracing the morning steps.
Speaker 1: The bakery stood and changed. Partridge feathers swirled in the window.
Speaker 1: The news agents racked bore the same shots of war
Speaker 1: and weather. The clock shop, though every time I glanced
Speaker 1: back at its stay as reeny outwood, as if daring
Speaker 1: me to admit I miss something obvious all these years
Speaker 1: at home, my scourgey is worth of my own notes. Again,
Speaker 1: no mention of clockmaker, nor photograph, not even astray commented
Speaker 1: delivery from Mamsell in faded Prince, where I could see
Speaker 1: missus Kravitz's hosing her stupen may. The window beside her
Speaker 1: sat blank, unclean. Yet I now lived in a world
Speaker 1: where every one I trusted or called not only the
Speaker 1: shop's persons, but its history and every cork of its trade.
Speaker 1: My records denied it, their memories insisted upon it. So
Speaker 1: a scribbled day two shop reported always there by several locals,
Speaker 1: contradiction collective record oppose his personal evidence. What could a
Speaker 1: man trust when stone and memory no longer alive? Curiosity
Speaker 1: and heathered from certainty is a powerful force, one I
Speaker 1: never trusted in yonder days, preferring systems that could be
Speaker 1: diagramed improved. That evening, I took up my field notebook
Speaker 1: and a well sharp and corpenter's pencil, curroed it myself
Speaker 1: with the stubbornness of habit, and set out, as a
Speaker 1: surveyor might, to measure, to test by the canal. The
Speaker 1: day was folding into dusk, shadows splayed sharp beneath the bridges,
Speaker 1: the air vibrating with hints of wet grass and woodsmook.
Speaker 1: The clockmaker stood with its window glowing amber, a lantern
Speaker 1: flickering above its sign. I spent ten minutes observing, methodically,
Speaker 1: sketching every brick in the facade of the cracks, the
Speaker 1: shade of moss climbing up one corner, the culor of
Speaker 1: painted iron supporting the sign. The door scuffed but not WAPs,
Speaker 1: swung slightly as customers entered. A mother and toddler a
Speaker 1: seated when clutching a case through the glass, The array
Speaker 1: of clocks performed its minor miracle of order, each beating
Speaker 1: out a line in a secret symphony. As I made notes,
Speaker 1: the twins appeared to Lease, with her violin strapped over
Speaker 1: her shoulder, Joe and grinning, clarinet case spinning from one finger. Elise,
Speaker 1: you've played here for years, haven't you, I asked. She nodded.
Speaker 1: Liz curls bobbing. Do you remember the shop always being here?
Speaker 1: She looked, affronted. Of course, I tuned to their chimes. Listen.
Speaker 1: She cocked her head as a soft trio of notes
Speaker 1: trickled from inside. Weirdly beautiful, neither the hour nor half
Speaker 1: hour strike. Who else's clock would behave that way? Joan concurred,
Speaker 1: eyes dancing. When we record our songs, we sometimes catch
Speaker 1: the chimes. Every street has its echo. That's half our maps.
Speaker 1: On a whim, I asked a Lease to walk with me,
Speaker 1: show me, if you would, exactly where the shop stands.
Speaker 1: We strolled two bridges east, talking ode of sheet music
Speaker 1: and neighbors. When we turned to look back, she laughed
Speaker 1: and pointed, there see across from the old pharmacy, and
Speaker 1: there on the south bank between the bakeries, twin endacoblers
Speaker 1: sat a clock maker's window unmistakable. The same blue skull
Speaker 1: and gold clock is blazing beneath the street lamp. I
Speaker 1: felt a chill, not a fear, but a sense of
Speaker 1: being deeply, wonderfully wrong. The buildings, old as legend were unmoved.
Speaker 1: Not a brick shifted. The shops stones matched its neighbors,
Speaker 1: ancient faces, the little grown as weathered as anywhere else.
Speaker 1: There were no signs of construction, no row brick, no
Speaker 1: new mortar. I snapped a photo with my phone the
Speaker 1: next morning, scrolling through the gallery, I saw only the
Speaker 1: blank time on shop front. I'd have been so caught
Speaker 1: up that I failed to actually photograph the right spot,
Speaker 1: but my memory was as sharp as the lines I drawn.
Speaker 1: Something wasn't adding up. Determined to match Choune of doubt
Speaker 1: to evidence, I asked Miss s Kravitz from her flower
Speaker 1: thick window. Did the clockwicker ever collect bread from you?
Speaker 1: She cackled out. Their apprentices are hungry law always picking
Speaker 1: up pearls. On the south bank or was at the east,
Speaker 1: depends how you're walking, Love, My confusion must have been visible.
Speaker 1: She patted my hand, squeezing finger sticky with dough. Doesn't
Speaker 1: matter which bank. They were good customers always. Later, Lena
Speaker 1: produced an invis from the schools arka beautifully embossed Absol
Speaker 1: and Sons Canal Lane service, dated nineteen forty seven. I
Speaker 1: examined every mark, every faded stamp. It looked older than
Speaker 1: my parents. She beamed to see proof, but payful disagreed
Speaker 1: on location. They were always by Bridge seven, never by
Speaker 1: the bakery, yet standing with me just then the sharp
Speaker 1: faced Bridge five pision. As always, I gathered my old
Speaker 1: walking maps, aligning them beneath the glare of my desk lamp.
Speaker 1: If I let myself follow others leeds Eliza's landmarks, Miss
Speaker 1: says Kravitt stories. Each day, the bridges seemed fractionally altered.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a block would bend a little, aside ally join
Speaker 1: a different main street. Nothing sighs were just enough to
Speaker 1: unt ziddle as I dug further. Neighbors described with great
Speaker 1: detail a widow's silver lock at that child anoon auntsel
Speaker 1: fixed it years ago when the snow nearly shut them in.
Speaker 1: A pensioner's oakenhall clock was theirs to repair, I think,
Speaker 1: and I always went to them by the bakery, or
Speaker 1: was it the canal. The only thing constant was the
Speaker 1: feeling that the shop existed wherever one needed it to be,
Speaker 1: so long as you were willing to believe it belonged there.
Speaker 1: And nobody, not the twins with their nimble feed, not
Speaker 1: missus Kravitz with her flourry grip, not Leaner with her ark,
Speaker 1: have appeared to find this problematic, I wrote, combined contradiction,
Speaker 1: the shop, and even the city's geography shifts to fit expectations.
Speaker 1: No one finds it ought. My evidence nowhere matches theirs.
Speaker 1: The more I pulled at the scene, the larger the
Speaker 1: opening grew. The only thing truly fixed was my own uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Certainty is addictive. The more the pieces refused to fit,
Speaker 1: the more irresistible the puzzle. Enough, I thought time to
Speaker 1: enter the shop itself, to become part of the world
Speaker 1: whose contradictions had so quietly appended the rules of streets
Speaker 1: and memory. March Rain fell in his and sheet as
Speaker 1: I crossed over a bridge five, a touch less steep
Speaker 1: than before I noticed, though I might have blamed the
Speaker 1: wetness for my caution. Boots mudding at the canal's edge
Speaker 1: the shop waited with a warmth that prickled against the
Speaker 1: chill when Nosy galow and Cloke's faintly luminous in the dusk. Inside,
Speaker 1: the air was thick with wood polish, the faint metallic
Speaker 1: ten of brass and something else sos, and perhaps of
Speaker 1: the scent that follows a lighting stone's passage. Clocks ringing
Speaker 1: every wall, tall and arrow, squat and wide, a riot
Speaker 1: of hands and faces altering in a pattern that never
Speaker 1: quite repeated, but never jarred. As I drew the door
Speaker 1: closed behind me, a tall, thin man with wire spectacles
Speaker 1: and the sort of smile one gives a returning customer
Speaker 1: extended his hand. Victor, welcome back, he said, my gunsel
Speaker 1: at your service. Did the clock we repaired for you
Speaker 1: last autumn? Keep good time? After all? I felt, in
Speaker 1: that moment as if the world had performed the sleight
Speaker 1: of hand. I had never been here, never commissioned anything.
Speaker 1: Yet Mike expected me with the gentle, truthful affection one
Speaker 1: reserves for an old neighbor. His hands were nimble, stained
Speaker 1: by brass, his gray hair combed back above a faceach
Speaker 1: by laughter rather than fatigue, and apprentice bustle passed a
Speaker 1: dark haired woman offering me your usual seat. Sunlight through
Speaker 1: the rain, gloss glass pulled in a plane would knockof
Speaker 1: by the window. I sat at a loss, nope, twitching
Speaker 1: in my hand, my covered eyes warm but ascrutable. Would
Speaker 1: you like to see our new pieces? Or as the
Speaker 1: mantel clock must behaving again, his tone was velvet overseal.
Speaker 1: This gentle insistence that I belonged to, that I had
Speaker 1: always belonged, was more disorienting than any shifting geography. I
Speaker 1: observed the clocks. There was a ground full of clock
Speaker 1: whose are hand glided in exact reverse, but whose pendulum
Speaker 1: soft tick was almost in FaZe with the passage of
Speaker 1: my own watch. There was a brass wall clock whose
Speaker 1: ivory face shimmered, the hour's position, gently shifting. As I stared,
Speaker 1: hands flickering rather than advancing another. A pocket watch displayed
Speaker 1: under a glass dome would let out a trio of
Speaker 1: notes at random intervals, as if conversing with the clock
Speaker 1: across the room. I forced myself to confront myerk. I
Speaker 1: cannot recall ever entering the shop. He smiled, not unkind
Speaker 1: memory wonders even here the canal change his base for
Speaker 1: a soul. We are grateful when people bring theirs in,
Speaker 1: old or new, It makes no difference. He gestured around,
Speaker 1: indicating both the clocks and the room's clearly ancient furniture,
Speaker 1: polished with generations touch. Time is patched sometimes on the
Speaker 1: side of the water. The shop is stable when it
Speaker 1: must be. That's always been so, hasen't it. I tried
Speaker 1: to protest, but there was no malice, no sense of trickery,
Speaker 1: no performance for my benefit, only the quiet assurance of
Speaker 1: someone whose craft exists at the hinge of ordinary things.
Speaker 1: As I rose to leave, Mike pressed a small brasquay
Speaker 1: into my hand. If your clocks begin losing time, come back.
Speaker 1: We keep the odd ones, the ones that don't quite
Speaker 1: fit the usual patterns. What struck me most the feeling,
Speaker 1: simultaneously of having trespassed upon and been invited into something
Speaker 1: essential to the city's fabric. The clock's hormonized softly behind me,
Speaker 1: a meashuck of time and rhythm on the sodden street.
Speaker 1: I turned, half expecting the shop to have vanished, But there,
Speaker 1: its window burning bright, each clock still holding to its
Speaker 1: mysterious tune. My old engineer's mind always hungry for an
Speaker 1: explanation ticked now with new rhythm. Perhaps it wasn't a
Speaker 1: trick or an error, but a property of the place.
Speaker 1: The shop belonged to the city, not just in geography,
Speaker 1: but embedded in the patterns that govern memory, perception, and custom.
Speaker 1: I scribbled in my note book, anomaly is not an
Speaker 1: arab but function. Shop as both brage and anchor, impossible,
Speaker 1: yet part of the world. On the far bank, Johannes
Speaker 1: Clarinet sketched rising uncertain melodies. Dust thickened in to night,
Speaker 1: and I realized, with a shiver of excitement, I was
Speaker 1: no longer simply witness in the city's strangeness, but living
Speaker 1: inside it. The clocks in my hedgehi and curiously, all
Speaker 1: the way home, the dumpy things, each beat of those
Speaker 1: impossible mechanisms repaying immemory, like snippets of a melody whose
Speaker 1: logicallyded me, but whose beauty I could not deny. By
Speaker 1: the time I had climbed the narrow staircase to my
Speaker 1: apartment and dropped my sodden coat over the radiator, I
Speaker 1: found the brusque still in my pometiny thane eloqantly, cut,
Speaker 1: cool and wady. I set it down on my table
Speaker 1: and stared at it, half expecting it to vanish or
Speaker 1: perhaps slipped through the cracks, like everything else about Ansel
Speaker 1: and Sons, but a state of physical guarantee that something
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary had not only occurred, but wanted
Speaker 1: to keep happening that night lodged under my skin in
Speaker 1: a way only a handful of others, ever, had. I
Speaker 1: could not concentrate on my evening routine, could not settle
Speaker 1: with my book or even the crosswood. My thoughts circle
Speaker 1: the shop, the seamlessness with which it had accepted my presence,
Speaker 1: the quiet surety of my counsel's welcome. I replayed every
Speaker 1: odd phrase, every tick and charm. Sleep did not come easily.
Speaker 1: Somewhere between midnight and dawn, I gave into the urge
Speaker 1: to plan, filling pages with questions rather than diagrams. By morning,
Speaker 1: the world pail foxoft reminded me that ordinary life continued
Speaker 1: begging lean as pardoned for my distraction. I walked the
Speaker 1: road again, passing between Bakery and his agent. I was
Speaker 1: searching for the impossible shop front. This time Ansell and
Speaker 1: Sons was not there, Only the old empty window, lace
Speaker 1: curtains drawn against the gray met my gaze, I steered uncertain.
Speaker 1: I even checked my notebook. The sketch from yesterday was
Speaker 1: still there, each crack stone, each flourish of the hanging sign.
Speaker 1: Yet only absence faced me. Now, just as my old
Speaker 1: memories had insisted, was the encounter already receding on stitch
Speaker 1: from realities coal Or had I simply crossed back into
Speaker 1: a corner of the city that no longer needed the anomaly,
Speaker 1: As any engineer would, I set about testing this variable.
Speaker 1: Instead of retracing the canal on my own. I arranged
Speaker 1: to Meelina at the cafe and asked her, on one
Speaker 1: pretext or another, to walk with me past the location.
Speaker 1: To my slight relief but greater fascination, she spotted nothing amiss.
Speaker 1: He look as if he expects something to jump out Victor,
Speaker 1: she teased, eyes bright as we reached the cross roads.
Speaker 1: Perhaps she needs wrong a coffee. I played along, not
Speaker 1: telling her what I saw or failed to see. But
Speaker 1: curiosity never rests. Later that afternoon, I looped the south
Speaker 1: bank by myself, coming upon Nansel and sons, nestled there
Speaker 1: between the cobwoers and the far stall, as if drawn
Speaker 1: by my own need to find a present. Each stone,
Speaker 1: each mote of just on the window sill, rang with
Speaker 1: the certainty of permanence. It was all so natural, so
Speaker 1: inevitable in its place, that I wondered how I had
Speaker 1: ever doubted its existence. I stepped inside, no longer hesitating,
Speaker 1: carrying my questions and the key like talismans. This time
Speaker 1: there was no gentle pretint of my status. Mike appeared
Speaker 1: at the work bench, nodding, as if I had simply
Speaker 1: returned from a brief errand Ah back, so soon have
Speaker 1: you brought the cock with a slipping minute hand. I
Speaker 1: had not, and said so. Mike seemed only mildly surprised.
Speaker 1: No matter, we can always find another project. His tone
Speaker 1: was conspiratorial, almost tender, as if I had graduated from
Speaker 1: casual acquaintance to something more trusted. I roamed, absorbing the details,
Speaker 1: the dust moat swirling in the sunlight, the form of
Speaker 1: movement embedded in every corner. But my eyes were drawn
Speaker 1: to a display case by the door. There, under beveled
Speaker 1: glass lay an array of objects. A battered old stopwatch
Speaker 1: shall lock at his covered tick faintly, A heavy silver
Speaker 1: finished wristwatch pitted with age, A long, narrow clock whose
Speaker 1: face bore not numbers, but a looping phrase in a
Speaker 1: language I had never studied. Looking closer, I noticed movement
Speaker 1: in the lock at an image, a tiny figure spinning
Speaker 1: and dissolving, as if in some perpetual ballet. I pressed
Speaker 1: my ear to the glass. A chime, not musical but
Speaker 1: almost spoken, rose from within, a child's laughter, a boat horn,
Speaker 1: the bubble of water against stone. The rest watch's blasphace
Speaker 1: flickered briefly, and in its reflection for a moment, I
Speaker 1: saw a rain drench parade that I could not recall experiencing,
Speaker 1: but which was heartbreaking and familiar. A young man behind
Speaker 1: the work bench, Thomas, I recalled from an earlier visit,
Speaker 1: scratched furiously at a sketchbad catching my gaze, he flashed
Speaker 1: a nervous, a proud smile, and shifted the pads so
Speaker 1: I could see sketches of the canal's bridges, its winding lanes,
Speaker 1: thrawn free and from memory, but never quite matching the
Speaker 1: official city maps I'd internalized over years. Instead, the terrens
Speaker 1: and junctions seen blurred at their edges, streets melting into
Speaker 1: and then out of one another, as if the city
Speaker 1: itself were breathing. Sensing your chance, I asked, do you
Speaker 1: mat the city as it is? Or as it was?
Speaker 1: Thomas hesitated, as it wants to be, I think, he replied,
Speaker 1: or or as we need it to be. The logic,
Speaker 1: if you could call it, that felt more mechanical than mystical,
Speaker 1: but only if you allowed your definition of mechanical to
Speaker 1: encompass symphonies. And with her memory itself looking around, I
Speaker 1: understood with dawning clarity that the clocks were more than
Speaker 1: tie keepers. They were vessels for specific, thickened moments, memories
Speaker 1: encased in form and motion, each a thread in the
Speaker 1: faber of the city. Testing this realization, I turned to
Speaker 1: Mauk do you can you record memories? And these? My
Speaker 1: voice sounded naive, even to me. He seemed almost pleased
Speaker 1: by the directness. Some memories want holding, some want softening.
Speaker 1: There was a rhythm to it. That's what our trave
Speaker 1: really is. We tend to places where things might frey,
Speaker 1: where time goes. Then our memory doubles back on itself.
Speaker 1: His gaze went for a second, unfocused, as if tracking
Speaker 1: a far away hour. I tried to press further, how,
Speaker 1: why for whom? Mike only laughed, a sound that mingled
Speaker 1: warant and caution. If it were as simple as a repair,
Speaker 1: anyone could do it. But the shop listens to it's
Speaker 1: always been, so he handed me the battered saw porch.
Speaker 1: Think of us as keepers, not just of clocks, but
Speaker 1: of the space between stories. The phrase space between stories
Speaker 1: snagged at my thoughts as I exited once more into
Speaker 1: the drifting light. I walked the canal without purpose, now
Speaker 1: hoping to catch the shop by surprise, hoping perhaps to
Speaker 1: learn what it truly was by observing its absence as
Speaker 1: much as as prisons. That evening, I tried to photograph
Speaker 1: the building again, determined to catch some physical artfact on
Speaker 1: digital FuMB approve. The next morning, the image displayed only
Speaker 1: the smooth and broken bricks of a shop frontless lane.
Speaker 1: The clock nick at the sign, the rich window had
Speaker 1: all been excluded from the memory of the device. For
Speaker 1: all that, the key on my table remained. Stubbornly reeled
Speaker 1: the stop, which now taking steadily next to if a
Speaker 1: metronome for a melody, only I could sense the urge
Speaker 1: to investigate, to build an empirical framework grew. I brought
Speaker 1: up my engineers Kip from the closet, the folding rule,
Speaker 1: the measure and tape, an old spirit level. My stack
Speaker 1: of city plans from before the post war repairs. I
Speaker 1: mapped each block, noting the distances between no landmarks and
Speaker 1: every feature that could be studied in discreete accountable terms.
Speaker 1: Each day I added new notes, redrawing as needed. Yet
Speaker 1: each diagram, each number, only served to prove that what
Speaker 1: I sought did not exist within the confines of the
Speaker 1: measured world. I broadened my search. The next morning, I
Speaker 1: found Elise and Joans setting up across from a flower stall,
Speaker 1: tuning their instruments as the city's first warmth of the
Speaker 1: day spread over the canal. I explained my theory awkwardly,
Speaker 1: expecting at best amusement, but instead found them more receptive
Speaker 1: than anticipated. Ali a string then pointed across the water.
Speaker 1: We always catch the chimes when the clock strike the
Speaker 1: odd hours, don't we, Johanne. No matter which bridge we
Speaker 1: play by, we hear them. It's as though they air
Speaker 1: carries the sound wherever it likes. Joe and grinned. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we even adjust our plane to match. When I was little,
Speaker 1: my father said, the clocks help us remember. Even if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard them. If you listen, you find them
Speaker 1: tickling inside your mind. Afterward, a possibility emerged. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: shop was not an object in space, or not astris
Speaker 1: just ustrous that, but a principle winding silently through the city,
Speaker 1: harmonizing what might otherwise splinter into chaos. An anchor, yes,
Speaker 1: but also an invisible architect, tuning the geography to so
Speaker 1: of the narratives people most require. To test the theory,
Speaker 1: I took to walking the canal at dawn alone, tracing
Speaker 1: alternate routs each time, first the well trodden north bank,
Speaker 1: then a meandering curve that led me to the old
Speaker 1: Assembly Hall, then back through the twisting allies that only
Speaker 1: locals knew. In the places where the canal bent most deeply,
Speaker 1: at the intersections where even the paving stone seemed to
Speaker 1: lose confidence, I found evidence both subtle and profound that
Speaker 1: the city's stubborn refusal to settle into sinkle a moving shape.
Speaker 1: For instance, at one turn, the bakery abudded the clockmaker
Speaker 1: directly as before. On the next, a tiny seam nearly invisible.
Speaker 1: A change in the arrangement of window boxes or lamp
Speaker 1: mounted on a wall. Once blank, the clockmaker's shops seemed
Speaker 1: to flex as I rounded corners, surfacing almost only where
Speaker 1: I had prepared myself to see it. I began to
Speaker 1: wonder whether the people who filled my life, Lina, the
Speaker 1: Cess Kravitz, even the twins, were as and scheekubly confident
Speaker 1: in the cities of variability as I had once been.
Speaker 1: Perhaps confidence itself was part of the system, a bolward
Speaker 1: against the knowledge that things did, in fact slip. Their
Speaker 1: stories bore internal consistency, their references casual and sincere. But
Speaker 1: try as I might, I could neither prove nor disprove
Speaker 1: anything about their own relationship to the shifting landscape I
Speaker 1: grew bold. Lena was the most practical person I knew,
Speaker 1: and if any one could serve as a check on
Speaker 1: my growing sense of on reality, it was she. The
Speaker 1: following morning, I invited her to toward the area with me,
Speaker 1: mapping out the bakery, the post box, all the natural
Speaker 1: stops in our ordinary routine. She conversed bladely about the
Speaker 1: mayor's new street painting scheme, about ancoming play, about her
Speaker 1: grand niece's stubborn refusal to eat greens. Gently, I directed
Speaker 1: her attention to the stretch between bakery and newsagent Lina.
Speaker 1: Do you see the clockmakers today? She nodded without hesitation.
Speaker 1: Of course, Victor, the signs a bit faded, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I noticed that all the hinges on the door good work.
Speaker 1: She described in crisp terms, the exact details I had
Speaker 1: seen in myself only on other mornings. The color of
Speaker 1: the stones, a flare of blue on the sign of
Speaker 1: blooms in the window sill. At my silence, she drew closer.
Speaker 1: You've been so serious lately, she teased, as if time
Speaker 1: itself were on the fritz. That was a paradox, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Only those inclined were, perhaps faded to question the trust
Speaker 1: ordiness of routine. Could see the shop for what it was,
Speaker 1: a fixture and a flexibility, a memory maker for the
Speaker 1: city's strangeness. The rest simply needed it to be there
Speaker 1: and sold. It was in all the most necessary ways.
Speaker 1: I redoubled my effice at objectivity to paying technology, this
Speaker 1: time a GPS tracker on my phone, cross referenced by timestamp,
Speaker 1: voice notes, and photographs. Each time, the co ordinates with
Speaker 1: the supposed location of Amsel and Sons would differ subtly
Speaker 1: from day to day, failing to repeat, even as my
Speaker 1: own sense of the physical journey remained unchanged. I consulted
Speaker 1: the city's Registry for Businesses. The records, when they materialized,
Speaker 1: granted Ansel and Sons a place in the past aastorical businesses,
Speaker 1: sometimes at Bridge seven, sometimes at Canal Lane, sometimes lested
Speaker 1: as a wartime casualty, sometimes as a critical pillow of restoration.
Speaker 1: The addresses nodded to street alignments wiped away in long
Speaker 1: ago floods, as if the registry itself suffered from memory
Speaker 1: loss or a form of furtive collaboration with whatever power
Speaker 1: underlay the shop's mutability. It was only when Lena handed
Speaker 1: me a stack of antique in vises, each made out
Speaker 1: to Ansel and Sons, spanning decades, each with a different
Speaker 1: street address, but otherwise identical at the truth, or at
Speaker 1: least the contour of truth, began to emerge. The objects
Speaker 1: of these clocks, these fragments of other lives, were not
Speaker 1: mere artifacts, but witnesses, touch stones for each attempt the
Speaker 1: city made to renew or conceal its own inconsistencies. The
Speaker 1: first test I attempted was to bring in someone untouched
Speaker 1: by local habit Greta, an old colleague of mine, visited
Speaker 1: from out of town and joined me at my request.
Speaker 1: I guided her, with much ceremony from the bakery to
Speaker 1: the supposed shopprint. She smiled, chatty at all troubled that tailor.
Speaker 1: There haven't seen a sign like that in years, she commented,
Speaker 1: peering into a dust cap win aware from me, the
Speaker 1: golden clockfis shawn as ever, I tried to insist, don't
Speaker 1: you see the clockmakers? She frowned with gentle concern. There
Speaker 1: was nothing odd to her, certainty, as impermeable as the
Speaker 1: water in the canal. Determined to break through, I entered
Speaker 1: the shop alone. Kreda left outside. Once inside, the shop
Speaker 1: welcomed me as always, Mike's nod, tomas at his sketches,
Speaker 1: the whispers and chins that filled the strange luminal air.
Speaker 1: There was even a new entry in the ledger by
Speaker 1: a front desk mister Claws with guest unregistered clock absent.
Speaker 1: My steps felt, in a small way, as if I
Speaker 1: straddled to contending versions of the city, one that stretched
Speaker 1: as needed, one that repared itself for the sake of harmony.
Speaker 1: I asked Mirk then for shaking a little, not with fear,
Speaker 1: but from the peculiar weight of the revelation. Do you
Speaker 1: know when the city changes? Or are you simply hear
Speaker 1: when it does? He laughed softly, polishing, and ben clock
Speaker 1: can until it cleamed. All cities are thin places, victor
Speaker 1: places that remember for the world, Places where if you push,
Speaker 1: the world stitches back together in whatever shape it needs
Speaker 1: to carry on. He looked at me over the tops
Speaker 1: of his glasses. We are Cautaker's stitches. Mend the torn edge,
Speaker 1: replace a lost hour fold in an Errand story. The
Speaker 1: shop appears when and where the frame most needs mending.
Speaker 1: His words aligned all I had witnessed Elise's variable chimes,
Speaker 1: Lina's fixed recollections, the fluctuating logs and records into a
Speaker 1: machinery not of deceit but of service. The clocks were
Speaker 1: not simply for repair, but for remembering, for Haulding memories humanity.
Speaker 1: But a city could not always keep safe on its
Speaker 1: own on a hunch, As coward Lena' school upwrok with
Speaker 1: the old troublesome assembly hull clock maintenance entries by decade,
Speaker 1: each terminating an anseult with neither date nor inveros number,
Speaker 1: no work order, just of recurring word, anchoring the repair
Speaker 1: to whichever version of the school was most needed at
Speaker 1: the time. It was as if the clock, like the city,
Speaker 1: could be men of retractively by merely invoking the correct name,
Speaker 1: the correct story. It was a realization at one's humbling
Speaker 1: and liberating. The point was not to trap the anomaly
Speaker 1: in a pin, but to accept that some mechanism's only
Speaker 1: function in the tension between contradiction and need, That the
Speaker 1: city's beauty was richer for containing seams. You could only
Speaker 1: glimpse the angle of curiosity. I confronted Mike one last time,
Speaker 1: seeking certainty. What if nobody noticed the cracks? I asked,
Speaker 1: would you remain? Would the shop fade? He only shrugged,
Speaker 1: a craftsman at ease. Some one always notices, and when
Speaker 1: they do, we're here to put things back as they want,
Speaker 1: were as they must be. That was as close to
Speaker 1: ann answer as I would get, or perhaps as close
Speaker 1: as any answer needed to be. Leaving the shop, clutching
Speaker 1: the battered stop or choose ticking, I realized no longer
Speaker 1: measured seconds, but memory stitch to them. I felt the
Speaker 1: city itself had become stranger and infinitely more precious. You
Speaker 1: could not four cents upon it. You could only walk
Speaker 1: and look and welcome what serviced. In the weeks that followed,
Speaker 1: I stepped back from my ceaseless measuring, and my attempts
Speaker 1: at authoritative mapping. The canal district seemed gentler, now, not
Speaker 1: less confusing, but less insistent upon my control. I watched
Speaker 1: the twins as they played by nearly familiar bridges, Miss
Speaker 1: Kravitz teasing me about that old time keeper Lena, speaking
Speaker 1: blithy of skull repairs, as though they'd always resolved themselves.
Speaker 1: We all kept moving in rhythm, even if the city
Speaker 1: behind us tremble between versions. My engineering mind, so long
Speaker 1: steeped in the need for certainty, now savored its friction
Speaker 1: with the unknown, learning the pleasure of letting questions unfold
Speaker 1: without rushing toward the answer. In a last conversation, Leaner
Speaker 1: and I lingered at the edge of the canal spring,
Speaker 1: sunlight filtering luminous through budding Linden leaves. Ye never did
Speaker 1: tell me what really bothers you about the shop, she mused,
Speaker 1: voiced gentle. I surprised myself with a smile. I think
Speaker 1: I've decided not to let it bother me. I said,
Speaker 1: not any more. The clocks are keeping their own kind
Speaker 1: of time, she squeezed. My arm lives are patchworks on times, victor,
Speaker 1: don't pull too many threads, or the whole thing a mavels.
Speaker 1: Time passed, My walks remain, the post books still green,
Speaker 1: the bakery as fragrant as ever. Sometimes, where the morning
Speaker 1: was gray and the water slow, I'd find a clockmaker's
Speaker 1: shop waiting, sig glowing faintly, clock faces half turned to
Speaker 1: meet the day. Sometimes it was absent, the window empty,
Speaker 1: the world restored through some blinking normalcy. But I had
Speaker 1: learned to look always for the same. On such a morning,
Speaker 1: as silver haze on the canal, the stones cool beneath
Speaker 1: my feet had paused by the spark where ansel and
Speaker 1: suns might or might not be, I carried Debrasquy in
Speaker 1: the ticking stopwatch. In their waight, I found reassurance and delight.
Speaker 1: What I wondered, do we fail to see each day?
Speaker 1: What impossible treasures? What silent harmonies? The city offered no answer,
Speaker 1: only the invitation to keep looking, to keep asking, and
Speaker 1: to welcome whatever quiet wonders came stitched in at the
Speaker 1: edges of the every day. And so I walked, growing
Speaker 1: ever more certain that for the truly curious, the world
Speaker 1: would always have another clock and another seam waiting to
Speaker 1: be discovered. And that is the end. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: and I will see you in the next one.