The Present is an annual clock.
One hand completes one revolution every 365.24 days.
To suggest the world might adopt such an instrument, alongside the standard clock, sounds absurd. I have been at it for twenty-one years. The absurdity doesn't go away. Accepting it is what makes the work possible.
The idea arrived in May of 2005. The first physical prototype was built in September 2011. The company was founded in Brooklyn in 2012. Since then, more than ten thousand clocks have gone out into the world. The aim is for that number to grow, and for versions of this instrument to appear in public spaces where people gather, wait, learn, and heal.
Camus wrote about Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll back down. His point was that Sisyphus, in accepting the task, becomes a figure of happiness rather than torment. The absurdity does not vanish. The acceptance is what changes.
The Present can seem practically unnecessary at first. People may say: we already have calendars. We already know what time of year it is. We can look outside.
Fair enough.
A calendar tells you the date. It helps you organize your life. But it does not quite give the year a body.
That is the distinction.
The Present is not meant to replace the calendar any more than a telescope replaces a map. It does something else. It makes the year visible as a continuous movement. Not a row of boxes. Not a list of named months. A single unfolding span.
A normal clock helps coordinate action. A calendar helps organize events. The Present helps you perceive duration.
That is its use.
You do not watch the hand move day to day. It does not perform for you. But over weeks and months, you begin to notice that it has moved. The year stops being an abstraction and becomes a pace.
Its practical use is this: to know the pace and span of a year the way you know the span of an hour, or the length of an inch.
An inch is useful because you feel it in your hands. An hour is useful because you feel it in your body. A year, in modern life, is often little more than a number. It could be a felt shape too.
Philosophically, it gives form to the idea that time is continuous rather than broken into points. The hand moves without ticking, slightly less than one degree a day, and the year becomes a form rather than a list of dates.
Spiritually, if I can say so without sounding grand, it points toward interconnectedness. A piece of paper is also a cloud, because without the cloud there is no rain, without the rain no tree, and without the tree no paper. Nothing exists by itself. What we do affects one another. We live as if we are separate, but we are not.
These are not decorative ideas. They describe the actual conditions of being alive.
I have accepted my fate. I am happy to have found something bigger than my one life. Something I believe is essential.
I will keep pushing the boulder. But I have started to notice something. The boulder is slowly moving downhill on its own.
My job is less about pushing now and more about clearing obstacles. Removing what is in the way so it can gather momentum.
Each sale brings us closer to placing another one in public. Private ownership helps fund public expansion. The loop reinforces itself. Given enough time and enough care, there is room, alongside the clock you already live with, for another instrument. Not to replace modern time, but to restore something it leaves out.
A new way to see time. A new way to experience the year. A new way to feel where you are inside something ongoing.
That is the gift.
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