Eggplants and Butterflies

Fifty years on…

Harold: Never thought I'd see this place again. Almost no change. Look - the house still stands. Akiya now, huh?
Hiroshi: No one wanted it. The younger people have left. The old ones stayed, but they are fewer every year.
Harold: Same names. Hando. Ikeda. I used to greet them every morning. Eggplants! I used to grow eggplants in this very garden.
Hiroshi: Hando’s grandson plants them every spring. He doesn’t know why—just knew eggplants always grew here.
Harold: This was my place, my rhythm. Wake up, water the garden, drink tea in the quiet. And the butterflies. They still look the same. Generations on.
___________
Voice-over
Hiroshi remarks that there are so few people now. Cities pull them away.

Fixing a Quartz Clock

Tik Tok…

Clocksmith: All fixed. Ticking like it should. 

Luke: Nice job. Thanks. How much?

Clocksmith: Give me ten dollars for the quartz movement. 

Luke: You mean the motor? But your labor?

Clocksmith: It only took five minutes.

Luke: You know, the quote I had was $80.

Clocksmith: It is what it is. Some guys have to make a living. I’m retired, like to help people get ticking again. I get to feel like a real clocksmith.

________

Voice-over

Pretty simple. The package of clock hands might not be to your taste.

Recommend watching Robert Massaioli take the actual movement apart and explain it.

The river flows faster in the middle

Over coffee...

.

Jean-Marc: You look at a clock and the minutes freeze. The time seems stuck.

.

Franciszek: Then you look away, and do something like read a news item, or two, or three, you look at the clock again, and the hands have spun around by an hour.

.

Jean-Marc: Cunning, clocks are. It seems they are watching us.

Out of time...

.

Franciszek (getting up): They do it to have a good laugh at our boredom, then our panic. And as we speak, time is passing. Time to seize the day.

.

Jean-Marc: Better late than never, but never late is better, eh?

_________

Voice-over

Watching the clock, sitting stopped, tick tock. Run around and time flies. Something like Dali’s Peristence of Memory? Maybe not. More like variance of perception. Time, sometimes it creeps, at others it flees. Like a river, at the edge it drifts, in the middle it rushes.

...

Flower clock

A mechanical metaphor…

.

Herbalist: Tokeisou (時計草). Clock flower.

.

Botanist: You mean flower clock?

.

Time to wake up...

Herbalist: A passiflora caruelea… it looks like a clock.

.

Botanist: Sorry. I was thinking of Linnaeus. He used the term Horologium flora or “flower clock” to mean flowers that opened in the morning and closed the afternoon or evening.

.

Herbalist: So you wouldn’t need a mechanical clock. Just go to the garden to know the time.

.

Botanist: Not dependable though. Problems of season, weather, and animals that would eat the flowers.

________

Voice-over

Linnaeus proposed a garden of flowers that would tell time in his Philosophia Botanica. For example, Hawkweed (Hieracium umbellatum) that would open at 5 AM and close at 6 PM. White waterlily (Nymphaeum alba) that would open at 7 AM, Ice plant (Cryophytum nodiflorum) at 10 AM, Day lily (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus) that would close at 10 PM.

...

February 29

Three rabbits... and counting 
(Google Today)

28, 29

Gregory: It’s my birthday.

Julian: February 29^th? You’re a leapling.

Gregory: I’m 10 years old.

Julian: You’re not.

Gregory: Okay. 44. But leap years come every four years, right? So 44 divided by 4 is ten.

Julian: Do you FEEL like ten? You LOOK 44.

Gregory: My mother used to give me a big party every four years. Always felt a bit shortchanged, like those who have birthdays on Christmas Day.

_________

Voice-over

2016 is a leap year. Today is a leap day. Gregory is a leapling.

Holiday's over

Michael grumbles but Sara is not entirely sympathetic.
...

Michael: Seven weeks of the eight gone and what have I got to show for it?

Sara: I told you, didn't I!

Michael: I know, I know, but time just slips by.

Sara: You have to compartmentalize your time, even on holiday. Bill Clinton was good at it.

Michael: I'm not Bill Clinton, I'm nearly retired. And I'll tell you this. There's a difference between those working and and those not working and their attitude to time.

Sara: Which is?

Michael: Those working have boxes to fill with time. Regular boxes with a fixed volume. Those not working carry around balloons. They can fill their balloons with a little time, or a lot of time. For them, time flows, time is fluid, time is rubbery.

_________
Voiceover

Sara uses standard inflammatory chunks "I told you..." and "You have to..." to chastize hapless Michael.

Michael, shoulders rising, looking away, enters defence mode, using expressions like "I know, I know..." and "I'm not..." to deflect criticism.

Then he plays a canny defence move. He enters analytical mode, taking the focus off the personal and soaring into the philosophical with his treatise on Time.
...