hablando solo

I heard once of a man with a stubborn clock. It was quite nicely designed, though it had seen its fair share of scuffs over the years. The size was somehow off, as it was too large and ungainly for a wrist or even a pocket, and could only be sat upon a table or a dresser, despite being too small to easily tell the time from a distance. That is, if it was telling the time at all; over the years, something in the internal mechanisms had gone awry and made the clock turn stubborn, always pulling itself forward or straining itself backward.

The man was quite fond of the clock, despite all its questionable and even troublesome qualities, and he was always polishing it and winding it back up each day. It was a curious thing, the stubbornness of the little device, and the man would alway grin to himself as he woke up and patiently wound the hands back into the correct position. The clock would push against the winding till the last moment, resisting like the tuning of a tight guitar string until, finally set back right, it would get right on with ticking along, seeming relieved to be working properly again. It would go on like that, ticking properly for a day or two or even, in one rare instance, up to a week. Generally, however, little time passed before it would rush forward again, or slow to a stubborn crawl. The man would grin to himself, wind it back up, and set it back up on display with the rest of his beautiful little clocks.