Timekeeping

Will Landschulz
Am Lit Per. 2
Mrs. LaMagdeleine

Joe is running from his memories, leaving them behind in a wash of random factoids from his school.  The chain of squares (2*2=4, 4*4=16, 16*16=256, etc.), and then again starting w/ 2*3.  A synopsis of David Copperfield.  5 of the planets.  The commandments, of which he can remember 6.  The Beatitudes, of which he can only remember 3.  And so on.  He eventually decides to try and figure out a time-keeping system.  He decides to puzzle this out because, as he says, all the books he read of people being isolated - he cites Robinson Crusoe and The Count of Monte Cristo - have figured out a way to mark time, because "if you have an idea of time then you are in the same world with them . . . but if you lose time the others go on ahead of you and you are left alone hanging in air lost to everything forever."  At first, he tries to brute-force the problem, by counting out the seconds one by one.  However, he thinks of a sprinter metaphor from counting too fast and that leads him to a memory of his high school and oh no, he's lost count again.  He tries the nurse's visits, and whether they bring food or have him poop or pee, while trying to count the seconds as before.  But that is taxing, and requires constant concentration, hard work for a mind so fragmented and repatched.  But he starts thinking laterally.  What does he use to tell when a nurse is coming? vibrations, which he can feel.  What else is skin good for, besides feelings.  It sweats to help control temperature.  If it can feel small changes in inner temperature, who's to say it can't feel small outer changes in temperature as well?  And that's how Joe thinks of using the sunrise and sunset to mark the days.  He can't see the change in light, but he can feel the increase in heat from the incoming rays of energy.  Every time he experiences that, it must be a new day.