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Socks | Mar 25 2005

Beth is writing something she calls Not Dead Yet. It’s a website. Each day Beth deletes whatever she wrote the previous day and replaces it with something new. The entire website is whatever Beth writes on this particular day, and nothing else.

This is not in itself interesting. Someone could do exactly what Beth is doing and it would be boring. But Beth writes things I like, in a way I like, and so I look forward each day to reading what she will write. Today Beth wrote about wearing socks on her hands, which is something she does to help herself sleep.

Another thing Beth does when she can’t sleep is think of a mermaid. The mermaid swims down through levels of caverns. When this doesn’t work, Beth thinks of an old Indian yogi humming on a hill beneath a starry sky. When this doesn’t work, Beth puts socks on her hands.

Today I realized that when Beth dies, someone will have to create a new website for her. This new site will consist of a single page, like Not Dead Yet, and it will have today’s date, like Not Dead Yet, only there won’t be any words on it. Each day it will be blank.

This new site will be called Dead.

This reminds me of a clock that Andrew made. He took a regular analog wall clock and removed the hour and minute hands. All that’s left is the second hand, which goes round and round. The clock is on the wall in Andrew’s apartment. Because it looks exactly like a regular clock, I always forget what Andrew did to it, and then inevitably I look up, and there’s that second hand, spinning in circles. Each time this happens—each time, seemingly, for the first time—I laugh. It’s a laugh less of amusement than recognition. Andrew’s clock is only clock I know that shows the correct time.