Temporal Anomalies
Chronologicians discover weirdnesses in time and seek the disruptive sources. |
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It looks like the reflected sign below the clocks says "colon room," and for our purposes that's auspicious, for the colon in a modern clock brings the digital realm to the analog one pictured. Yes, this is a time travel device. For vital instructions on how to use these sorts of photos for mystical ends, see How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook. This time-bending photograph is from Lambuth's 1977 yearbook.
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We spotted a temporal anomaly at "the crookedest church in the world." This Greek church, in the village of Ropoto, became wonky due to a landslide. There are two clock towers (bravo!) with faces that don't agree. (The guys from Exploring the Unbeaten Path venture inside the church for a mind-warping experience.) You'll likely have already diagnosed this temporal anomaly: as David Miller has said, "when space is folded, time is folded." Yet profound mysteries yet abound: how is this church intact, resting as it does at that incredible angle?
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We encountered and determined the cause of a temporal anomaly in the quaint Victorian downtown of Van Buren, Arkansas. The courthouse clock tower displays two times, only one of which is correct. As constant investigators of such phenomena, we traced the source of the problem almost immediately. Directly below the clock face that announced the wrong time, and next to the 1820 schoolhouse where the prominent Freemason Albert Pike first taught, there is a sundial with a broken pointer. That is the cause of the clock tower's divergence, magnified by the sundial's proximity to one of the oldest standing buildings in Arkansas. Though the cause is simple enough, great mysteries yet abound, for the nature of time itself is shrouded. And what, perchance, do the Freemasons have to do with this particular enigma?
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Having owned a two-faced clock for twelve years and never being able to get the times to agree, budding chronologician Adam (empowered by our investigations into temporal anomalies) finally realized that something was going on in his house. Though our best diagnoses require on-site inquiries, Adam's photos started some bells ringing:
Spinoza said that there are not two clocks but only one clock with two faces—our conceptions of mind and matter being manifestations of a single reality, a reality knowable by its constituent manifestations. And so, apparently, this is a time for seemingly conflicting messages. It’s been said that one must choose a side or get in the middle, yet how can one get in the middle of a two-faced clock, at least when it’s not part of a tower? Well, there is something inside every timepiece that embodies a piece of time. It’s the oscillation system—pendulum or springs. Yet oscillation systems don’t swing or spring by themselves—they require a constant push. What supplies the oscillation system with energy is called the “escapement.” Better heard than seen, it’s the escapement that gives clockwork its signature ticks and tocks. When shut, the escapement blocks the teeth of the gears. When open, energy flows into the oscillation system. That energy comes from being wound up or pulled with weights. The teeth grind only with energy released from the escapement. (The tooth that grinds the fastest is closest to the escapement—the second-hand.) What to do with all this secondhand knowledge and daily grinds? How can one reach escapement without all the wind-ups? Alas, it depends … because no two clocks are exactly the same. All we know for certain is that a good clockman must work as if he has all the time in the world.
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We encountered and determined the cause of a temporal anomaly in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. The clock tower of the Chestnut Hill Baptist church (whose motto, ironically, is "a historic church with a timely message") displays faces with three incorrect times. As constant investigators of such phenomena, we diagnosed the source of the problem at a glance. An oculus window replaces the clock face on the fourth side of the tower and is the cause of the trouble. The architect presumably sought to save a quarter of the cost of clockwork, and while three-quarter time may keep waltzes spinning, such an imbalance in a clock tower is its own death knell. Though the cause is simple enough, great mysteries yet abound, for precisely why does a window into the nature of time trigger a standstill?
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It's both 4:10 and 4:25 in this Michiganian temporal anomaly captured by Josh May at Flickr. Though we weren't on location to discover the exact cause of the timely weirdness, we offer this photo to help hone the insights of would-be investigators of temporal anomalies. The more clocks one sees that are "on the fritz" (Fritz being the German clockmaker who first went "cuckoo"), the better attuned one will be to time warps in the wild.
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"A decrepit clock tower told the Byzantine hours" (Colin Thubron, Night of Fire, 2017).
We encountered a temporal anomaly in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All four sides of the clock tower at St. Paul's Episcopal in Elkins Park told a different, frozen time. As constant investigators of such phenomena, we carefully searched the church grounds for the source of the problem, sidestepping slippery acorns and dodging a fallen electrical wire by the graveyard. The entire property is frankly decrepit, with the cemetery unkempt and the overall impression being one of abandonment. As historic preservationists ourselves, the state of this 163-year-old church was painful, to put it mildly. With so much disorder, it was difficult to pinpoint a specific cause for the temporal anomaly, so we looked within the name of the church itself. "St. Paul's Episcopal" is an anagram of "as collapses tip up." You will no doubt recognize that last phrase as a twist on the great Hermetic axiom, "as above, so below." The collapsing physical structure of the church, having slowly fallen into decrepitude over time, is reflected above, in the clock tower. "It is time for Episcopalians across the country to rise up" (Ruy O. Costa).
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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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