Our phones can do everything, our phones can be everything. Sometimes it’s nice to tell them to chill out.
I started wearing a watch again three years ago. It was a birthday present from my wife. I wanted a timepiece for mountain adventures, one I’d also enjoy wearing around town. I had a specific model in mind: a discontinued diver’s watch from Seiko, model number SKX013.
It ties to a memory from childhood, of a friend’s father. He was one of the Assistant Scoutmasters in our Boy Scout troop, a former Navy SEAL. He wasn’t the nicest guy, but I always liked the look of his watch: subtle, not too big, seemingly functional but not showy. It looked similar to a watch I remembered from my guide wearing on a rafting trip I once took in Namibia, in the late nineties, a Tag Heuer Aquaracer. Which, at about $2,000, is in a different price bracket; I found the Seiko on eBay for $300.
I love my watch for multiple reasons. It’s automatic, self-winding, and if I don’t wear it for two days, it dies. It keeps imperfect time, and frequently needs to be dialed back a minute or two. For me, these are all pluses. I like to imagine the gears grinding invisibly, not infallibly, the little wheels spinning on my wrist. I use the bezel, meant for scuba divers to track time underwater, to set a period while writing when I’m not allowed to check email or look at my phone.
I like to raise the watch to my ear and hear the mechanics, as though I’m pressing my ear to the ground, say I’m napping in a park somewhere, to hear the Earth at work.
I remember, when Everything Now came out two years ago, I did a podcast interview in the backyard of Michael Williams, the host of A Continuous Lean. Michael’s a watch guy and he noticed mine right away—he said something like a watch always projects something about the wearer, and that if I’d been wearing, say, a Rolex, it would’ve projected something else.
What do I find beautiful in a piece of jewelry? A watch connects me to the present moment. When it stops, hands askance, it invites me to reset—and maybe that cue occasions something internally, I don’t know. Every time I’ve taken it into the mountains, I deliberately knock it against a rock, to engrave a scratch from the trip in the steel.
Time is funny. Time’s arrow moves in one direction, supposedly—and is entropy increasing all the meanwhile? Is Stephen Hawking right about his folds? For me, time sometimes feels speedy, sometimes slow. I’m in my forties, and I don’t want to reverse time, any more than I want my blood to run backwards. But I do like the idea of paying attention to its advance.
Also, fuck phones.
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If you have the means, even for a month or two, your support would be incredibly appreciated.
In tomorrow’s Sunday supplement for supporters:
Thoughts on the big GQ story that dropped Thursday
Some resources for watch buying and watch repair, including private dealers in new, vintage, and rare
Autumn jams, piano meditations, recent reading, and more
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly dispatch from writer Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ things to love, along with a monthly long piece written on the road, for some inbox wanderlust. ⛰️
Rosecrans is the bestselling author of Everything Now. His most recent novel, The Last Kid Left, was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Books mentioned in Meditations in an Emergency are stored on a Bookshop list, which pays a commission for any books sold.
Great watch, that Seiko. Especially handsome on a black rubber strap, in my humble opinion.