SOMEWHERE WEST OF Manhattan, Kansas, I stepped out of the car and looked in all directions. Flat. Like they said. But interesting. Which they hadn’t said. A decent release of a bowling ball thrown from that vantage point could have meant a strike at the other end of the state. Barring any interference from the tumbleweeds.

As I was thinking this and watching the clouds expand into massive independent states, I walked towards a field of overgrown weeds, fenced in and junglelike. There were giant ceramic rodents peering out of the bush, and odd, chipped monkeys still wide-eyed, but now dull with faded paint. It was some sort of strange miniature golf/fallout shelter combo. I pictured children running screaming from these creatures, but no — replaced that with an image of peaceful family outings. I hadn’t seen a house in the last two hours, so it made sense that this entertainment option had languished out there in the empty afternoons. I thought about Laura Ingalls, and gingham, and starched white sheets. And I thought about the cliché of time standing still — and wondered if time really was standing still or, rather as I suspected, leaning in and watching. And I am there, on an endless flat surface, pondering if I have become the top hat or the shoe in a very large Monopoly game. Me and the ceramic monkeys, under the spotlight of a four-o’clock sun. I stood squinting, listening in to waves of imagined conversations in cars, through windows, across porches that didn’t exist.

Five years later, I have a watch that goes off at 4:08 every day. I don’t know why. It’s a Casio plastic deal — nothing fancy. Obviously. Fancy watches don’t go off at 4:08 without a reason; they chime, purr, convince, or cajole at proper, assigned moments. I like to hear mine chirping under cushions when I misplace the watch. It’s my little Lojack. I have become accustomed to the alarm, and say out loud to strangers, ‘It’s 4 oh 8!!’ They are startled. I am consistently delighted and amused. This is the exclusive minute of any day that I think in an exclamation point. It came out of the box this way, with this random celebration of the four-o’clock hour. In spiritual retrospection of that Walmart moment when I picked this particular watch from a pile, I ponder the implications. Perhaps I have been chosen as an ambassador, invited to the universal epicenter that opens every day for 60 seconds. All the other non-special people freeze in their stop-action frames while I walk around them, peering through this fractional chasm. There is little room for error. One minute later, elevators resume their climb, neighbors continue their musings, the interception occurs regardless. Staring in through the cracked surface I could see all things. I am Indiana Jones watching the rising sun through a crystal, revealing the secret burial place of the Lost Ark. “There in the prisms, keys to the kingdom.” In there, all is magical and perfect: There are no dropped passes, no wasted words, no cluttered baggage on the terminal of life. And then, the horrible thought. What if whoever, whatever set this destined bridge had not been diligent, had not followed time changes, leap years, battery blips? What if the real mystical passageway really opened at 4:09, and I was early. Or — more in character — late. Someone else was crawling into cosmic cubby holes and digging their way to China. But if I miss this boat, I know there are other ones out there. Despite the smoke and mirrors lining our everyday halls and walls, there are other black holes lurking under our feet. Anyone can fall into their overlapping places and paces while you are minding your own business. Right before you fall asleep, for instance. There’s a place you momentarily reside that is in-between. For a moment you are neither awake, nor completely asleep. Too heavy to move, too light to respond, you hear pieces of conversations — maybe from the dinner table while your parents sit with coffee, and you sprawl on the couch curled up and full. Or maybe talk from the television that moves in and out of your reception. And you factor it in. It streams in like spraypaint, coloring the walls with inexact shade. It runs into other moving hues, bumps and collides without injury. The sudden crash from the dropped dish in the dining room becomes a sonic boom that doesn’t disturb, but creates the soundtrack to the moving pictures. You are still aware of the pressed shoulder against the hardest part of the couch. You remind yourself to move. Before you fall asleep. But you cannot.
The fickleness of time’s measured perception can be a beautiful thing. In times of danger or anxiety, its long swinging pendulum grabs you by the waist and slows your frantic pace. You remember to turn your wheel a certain way, the rain drips, you think slowly, “Was it into the slide?’ Or time bumps us into another lane altogether, and one night you are at a party and feel a strange buzz around your ears while you are talking. You feel separate all of a sudden, like you are not really in that room right then, but still you are perceived to be there, so you must comply. You hear your voice lifting off your body like a strange perfume that identifies you, but isn’t really your kin. And instead of déjà-vu - the feeling you have been there before — you get the feeling that you aren’t even there now. Or that you will, at some point in the future, attend that party, just not right now. This is mind-bending stuff — brooding and low-lit, lest we see the gaffer sitting by the soundstage eating a bagel.

I picture the miniature golf course out there in Kansas, its painted wild animals stunned into ceramic moldings. Maybe they were, at one time alive and well, and watching with amusement while a bunch of small humans tried to maneuver around them. Maybe they have always been just part of the scenery. And maybe I was passing by that place at exactly 4:08, pressed against a dusty window that left no fingerprints, and saw a blue, neon, flickering sign that said “NOW OPEN."

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