Long ago, in a city where every tower carried a clock, there lived an old clockmaker whose workshop stood at the end of a narrow street.
People travelled from distant kingdoms to seek his work.
His clocks never lost a second.
His bells rang with astonishing precision.
His mechanisms were marvels of delicate craft.
Yet visitors always left puzzled.
For nowhere in the workshop could they find a single clock that showed the hour.
Some displayed only the changing seasons.
Others marked the blooming of flowers.
One turned only when a child laughed.
Another advanced whenever two old friends met again.
The strangest of all possessed no hands at all.
It merely breathed.
Naturally, everyone asked the same question.
"Master," they would say, "how can you be the greatest maker of clocks if none of your clocks tells the time?"
The old clockmaker would smile.
"I have never made a clock for time."
He would say nothing more.
One autumn morning a young apprentice arrived.
She wished to master the ancient craft.
For many months she polished brass, filed tiny gears, and learned to temper springs.
She became skilled with every tool.
Yet the mystery only deepened.
One evening she finally asked,
"What is a clock for?"
The old man looked surprised.
"What do people say?"
"They say it measures time."
"And what do you think?"
She hesitated.
"I no longer know."
The old clockmaker nodded.
"Good."
The next morning he carried her beyond the city walls.
There they came upon an ancient oak.
Children were climbing its branches.
Birds nested among its leaves.
An old couple rested beneath its shade.
The apprentice noticed that the tree was enormous.
Yet fresh shoots still appeared among its limbs.
The clockmaker asked,
"How old is this tree?"
She named a number.
He shook his head.
"You have counted its journeys around the sun."
"That is not the same question."
She frowned.
"What else could age be?"
The old man laid a hand upon the bark.
"This tree has become a thousand different trees without ever ceasing to be itself."
"It does not possess time."
"It participates in becoming."
Days later they stood beside a river.
The apprentice watched the water hurry past.
"It is always changing," she said.
"And yet it remains the river."
"Yes."
"Does the river keep time?"
She laughed.
"Of course not."
"It simply flows."
"And what is flowing?"
"The water."
The old man smiled gently.
"Is it?"
She watched more carefully.
The water was always different.
The current shifted.
The sunlight changed.
Leaves drifted past.
Fish rose and vanished.
Perhaps it was not the water that flowed.
Perhaps it was the river itself that continually became.
Still the apprentice remained uncertain.
So the clockmaker led her one final time, this time to the Hall of the Endless Loom.
There the Weavers were at work.
No thread ever stopped moving.
Old patterns opened into new ones.
New patterns quietly remembered the old.
Nothing remained fixed.
Nothing dissolved into chaos.
The apprentice searched for the beginning of the weaving.
She found none.
She searched for the end.
There was none.
At last she asked the eldest Weaver,
"When will the tapestry be finished?"
The Weaver laughed so warmly that the whole Loom seemed to shimmer.
"My child," she said,
"If it were finished, it would no longer be a tapestry."
That evening the apprentice returned to the workshop.
The clockmaker placed before her two instruments.
The first was a splendid clock of polished gold.
Its hands swept flawlessly around its face.
The second possessed no face at all.
Only an empty circle surrounded by quietly turning wheels.
"Which is the greater clock?" he asked.
The apprentice thought for a long while.
At last she touched the second.
"This one."
"Why?"
"Because it does not measure what has passed."
"It reminds us that everything is still becoming."
The old man smiled.
"You have begun to understand."
Years passed.
The apprentice became the new Keeper of the workshop.
People still came asking for clocks.
Some wished to master their days.
Others feared losing them.
She gave each a clock.
Yet none measured hours.
One marked forgiveness.
Another measured the ripening of patience.
Another turned whenever understanding deepened.
A traveller once complained,
"These are not clocks."
She smiled.
"No."
"They are reminders."
"Of what?"
"That the world is not carried by time."
"It is carried by becoming."
And so the towers of the city continued to ring their bells.
Morning followed evening.
Winter yielded to spring.
Children became elders.
Seeds became forests.
Questions became wisdom.
Nothing had changed.
Except that those who visited the little workshop no longer imagined that time was a river carrying the world.
They began instead to wonder whether time itself was one of the many songs the world sang as it continually learned how to become.
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