[original artwork by Laura Baran]
One Saturday morning, while cleaning out my family’s attic, I stumbled across some of my grandmother’s old treasures: a dusty photo album, a leather bound notebook of phone numbers, and a black hourglass with three columns and a snowy mountain of sand.
The hourglass intrigued me the most—a relic of the past, an artifact of the analog world. Even compared to a mechanical clock, this seemed simpler and more ancient.
I wanted to know the length of time it measured, so I flipped it over and waited. It was precisely one hour.
Afterwards, I was transported into a brief daydream. I imagined scenarios involving my grandmother and the hourglass: setting a cooking timer, practicing for an exam, or using it to enforce a daily writing regimen. She had always been a gifted writer and poet, and I wondered if this could explain the secret to her success.
As an inhabitant of the digital world of smart-phones and smart watches, where a timer is just one tap away, I considered whether this would be of much practical use. Perhaps it might look nice on display in my office, but not much more than that.
So I brought the hourglass down to my room and set it on the desk.
I turned it over.
As the steady streak of sand rushed down, and as a rising mountain formed at the base, a discomforting feeling came over me. It began to overwhelm me.
You see, time had discarded its invisibility cloak and taken on a form. And I stood there, transfixed and hypnotized.
As the sand fell, I noticed something strange where it was landing. A little figure popping in and out of the mountain, appearing and disappearing, little holes created as soon as they are destroyed.
This was certainly some kind of tiny creature. Was it an ant? A spider? A beetle?
Poor creature. I thought.
How could it possibly have gotten in there?
I took the hourglass in my hand, checking for any defects, any little holes the creature could have crawled through. But it was perfect. And if there had been a crack somewhere, surely there would be evidence of sand escaping. But this was not the case.
I tried to get a closer look at the creature. I almost took a magnifying glass, before realizing I might burn it to death! My curiosity would never forgive me.
So, instead, I just squinted my eyes to get a clearer look.
Then, I gasped. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It wasn’t an ant, a spider, or some other poor creature.
It was a human! A tiny man, on the younger side, getting crushed over and over again by the sand.
But the man kept jumping and swimming and crawling and persevering.
I tried to get a better look at his face.
But it can’t be. I thought.
“WHAT THE HECK! That’s my face! That’s me! That’s a miniature me!”
The last grain of sand touched down on the mountain.
Everything had come to a stop.
I waited for the tiny figure to re-emerge.
Stillness.
I repeated the experiment again.
But, alas, it was gone.
3PLMAG 