Lost And Found: One Hour

I’d been waiting for a morning like this for weeks. I.e. a morning when I’d wake up to a sunny day, feeling like I might just possibly have the energy within me to go out to the House; which stands empty since Dad moved to an assisted living group home two months ago.

An increased incentive for going dropped in through the mailbox on Friday. Authorities wanted me to put a sticker with a barcode on the wheelie bin. This, they claimed, will give us better service and be much safer. Hm. (I wonder how long before we’ll have to put a sticker on every garbage bag?)

Had the wheelie bin been in my own garden, this would have been a two-minutes-job at the most, no big deal. However, when the wheelie bin is in the garden of an empty house out in the countryside, and it takes me an hour or more to get there (by bus), and even longer to get back… For me, it’s a full day’s work.

However, the sticky little job solved one dilemma for me: Whether to pay a visit to the House, or to Dad, since the two are no longer in the same place. Sometimes “in my dreams” I manage both but the realistic me knows that without a private chauffeur I don’t. And sometimes I suspect myself of ending up not going anywhere as much from inability to choose as from other, more valid reasons.

So waking up this morning, feeling reasonably well rested, and seeing we had a sunny (and frosty) day coming, I decided to get the sticky job over and done with, and reassure myself that no big bad wolf had blown down the house since I was there last; and just  combine that with a bit of a photography walk, and no other overambitious plans.

I got off the bus a stop or two early and took a roundabout walk down by the lake. It really was a great day for photos…

At the House, things appeared to be in the same order as when I last left the place. The roof was still on. (A few months ago some tiles were not, so that’s why I’ve been a bit worried during recent stormy nights.) After my initial round, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. I was surprised to find how quickly time had passed. 12.45 already? Oh well… I had been walking rather slowly, taking photos, not thinking much about the time on my way there… So I decided not to rush but stay an extra hour. (Busses go regularly once every hour on weekends.) Found a pie in the freezer and heated that in the microwave for lunch. And had my tea.

The wheelie bin turned out to already have a sticker on it. In my eyes they looked exactly the same. I did not, however, compare the code bar by bar. I decided to just believe, for my own peace of mind, that they must have made some very important and life-saving (or at least money-saving) change there…

I also went through a few drawers in the bedroom and threw away some stuff no one is likely to miss (might as well make use of that carefully marked bin!).

Then I walked to the bus stop, and caught the bus back to town. Feeling that it had been a looong day, but that on the whole I had made good enough use of it...

Sitting on the bus, I glanced at my wrist watch. It showed 1.45 pm. Not 2.45 pm, as I had expected it to. At first I thought there was something wrong with the watch…

… But there wasn’t. While at the House, I had looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Which was still showing summer time, since no one had put it back on winter time! Never occurred to me! And my “body clock” is still a little confused, as well…

So that’s how I lost an hour, and got it back again, in the same day. I was back home around the time I had originally planned. But somehow… I still feel as tired as if I had been away at least an hour longer…

I guess I’ll have to blame it on jet-lag!

The Times They Are A’Changin’

I’m going back through my pictures from the past year and it’s getting harder and harder to remember what I have already shared or not. Or on which blog. Or in a collage or as single picture.

Same thing with post titles. I suspect I may well have used this one before. Especially since it’s not mine to begin with.

But if I can’t remember, I guess there’s a good chance that perhaps you can’t either…?

This photo is one that I took on the first frosty morning 2½ weeks ago. Since then we’ve been going back and forth between frosty and mild weather. Less colour left in nature with every turn…

Tonight we turn our clocks back to winter time. I’ll be glad of it in the morning but less glad in the afternoon.

Here are some words I probably also quoted before:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9

Quotation of the Week (42/2010)

“Time flies over us,
but leaves its shadow behind.”

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne ~

Quotation of the Week (31/2010)

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

~ R.W. Emerson ~

Time For A Change

Maybe it was all the talk of resurrection and renewal lately that made me finally take the leap and explore the new Blogger templates. 

Here’s a tip if you haven’t already thought of it: I have a hidden, secret “testblog” that no one can see but me. Its only purpose is for me to be able to play about with layout without any risk of messing the real blog up until I feel that I have at least an inkling of what I’m doing.

In spite of that, I haven’t really been playing much with layout. Since I started this blog 1½ years ago, I have only made one change of basic template, and the other big change was when I figured out how to add my own header picture. And I have been rather happy with that.

However. The world around us keeps changing, and sometimes we get hit by a need to make a bit of an effort to keep on top of things…

Because of the blog name, I wanted to keep to the sea and island kind of colour scheme. I also prefer to keep backgrounds simple, not taking too much attention from the actual content of the blog. But I found this wooden background picture that I really like... I find it restful to the eye, and I hope that my readers will like it too.

If any of you have trouble loading the blog or anything like that after the changes, please let me know.

---

The wooden clock-sculpture with the cat on top is of course another masterpiece by Uno Axelsson. (For more of of his animal sculptures, look in my Blog Archive for July.) There was a sign on the wall telling exactly how old that tree trunk was (I think it was oak?) and where it had grown, before it came into Uno’s hands. I have forgotten the details now.

That cat on the top might have something to do with a Swedish saying that I’m afraid probably makes even less sense in English than in Swedish. Even the origin of the Swedish word is unknown: klockarkatt, which would mean “cat belonging to a bell-ringer”. (We use one and the same word in Swedish for bell, clock and watch.) The saying goes “to be in love like a bell-ringer’s cat”, and refers to being a bit crazy and obsessed with the object of your affection. It seems there is also a German word Klosterkatze (“abbey cat”) which might possibly be connected to the Swedish one. If anyone knows more about it, please share.

Anyway… It seems to me that the cat on the top of that clock is keeping close watch on something…

Time And Time Again

On Tuesday afternoon I was told that dad would be moved on Thursday from the hospital to the nursing home; but they would phone me about the exact time. On Thursday by 2 pm I had heard nothing, so I called the hospital ward – and was told that no, it had been postponed until Friday. So today again I waited for that phone call; again I heard nothing, and when I called I was told that no, not today, but on Monday! (Remains to be seen what they say then.)

Since I had not been to see dad myself since Tuesday – partly because I kept thinking each day that I had better save my own energy for “tomorrow”! – I went up to the hospital again late this afternoon. He was more “awake” than he was last time, but not really very much more “aware”.

His sense of time and space has been out of order since before; but visiting him at the hospital now it strikes me even more forcefully how dependent we really are on Time for our sense of orientation in this world…

Every time I opened my mouth a time-related word seemed to popping out, and at the same time I realized that this probably conveyed very little to him now…

When I first came in, he said he was surprised to see me in the middle of the night. (It was 5.30 pm and the sun shining from a blue sky outside the window.) So automatically I tried to correct… Then I tried to get a grip of whether he remembered that I had been to visit earlier this week – or anything else that had happened earlier in the week (he didn’t). And then there was the task of trying to explain that my brother will be coming… next week? … on Monday? … in a few days? … soon? …  And so on… 

Dad in his turn tried to convey to me his own impressions: While I boringly tried to drag him into Reality and explain that he has been spending the last five days in a hospital bed, he tried to tell me that he had been away travelling and meeting relatives and friends and having quite an interesting time, only a couple of days ago! My sense of logic tells me this can only have been happening in his dreams… but to him those dreams seem more real than Reality now…

Thinking about it as I walked home in the warm summer evening… As long as his dreams are pleasant, perhaps we should just try to be glad for him that he is able to spend so much time in that “other world”…

But it is certainly not easy to make Communication “between worlds” work without reference to Time And Space! 

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

³ And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

---

¹⁴ And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so.

About the photos in this post:

1. Gulls over the river. See more photos from the same occasion in my Thursday post at Soaring Through the World.

2. For more of these glass birds, see today’s post in my Picture Book. They’re hovering over the hospital foyer. I have been thinking for months that I should take photos of them, but usually when I’m at the hospital I don’t have the camera with me + in the daytime the foyer is always a busy place full of people. But on Tuesday after I had been to visit dad, it was after “business hours”… few people around… and I did have the camera with me. So I took the opportunity.

Watching and Waiting

 

‘Hitman’ by Kent Karlsson

This sculpture is on loan for the summer exhibit and has been placed inside the bus centre building, with the train station in the background. Considering its name (and other recent events with other sculptures) perhaps a wise move to put it in a “safe” place! (My only complaint is that it wasn’t easy to get a good shot of it with the camera… because of the contrast between the darkness inside the building and the bright light outside.) 

I kind of like it. If I hadn’t read its name in the paper, I think I might have called it Time Traveller. The name Hitman gives it a more ominous feeling though…

“You can't own time, but you can use it.
You can't keep it, but you can spend it.
Once you've lost it you can never get it back.”

~Harvey MacKay~

Alarmed

In the middle of the night, I woke up, as I often do… Felt for the alarm clock by my bed, to check what time it was.

It was no time at all. The clock wasn’t there.

Strange! I had no recollection at all of having moved it. My first thought was of course that I had just happened to knock it down onto the floor. Perhaps it had rolled under the bed? But it wasn’t there.

So still half-asleep, in the middle of the night, I wandered all over the flat looking for it. It was not that I really needed it to wake up at a certain time in the morning.
It was the mystery I found hard to let go of. I had no memory at all of having had any reason the day before to take it with me into another room. And now in the night it was nowhere to be found.

It made me think of a daytime soap opera I’m watching, where recently one person has been trying to convince another that she is mentally ill, by moving stuff around for her and then accusing her of having done it herself… But no one else had been in the flat yesterday but myself! Spooky.

I gave up, took the kitchen clock and put that on my beside table instead, and went back to sleep.

Just after seven o’clock, I was awakened by a beep. The alarm clock! But not the kitchen one that was standing by the bed. Where on earth was the sound coming from?!

I got up and looked under the bed again.
It still wasn’t there. But it still beeped on, and the sound most definitely came from within the bedroom. Which really does not offer a whole lot of accidental hiding places.

At last I found it. It was stuck between the bed and the wall. How it got there, and why the alarm was set to ring, still remains a mystery. I suppose I must have woken up even earlier in the night and picked it up to look at it (I often do that instead of taking the trouble to turn the light on and put on my glasses); then fallen asleep again even before I had time to put it back. (?) The last time I had reason to actually set the alarm to ring in the morning was a week ago (but then I did set it for seven).

Seems I’m living in a soap opera of my own.

I’ve had some friends in my life who have told fantastic stories about things they’ve done in their sleep. One used to get up and take showers in the night; she only knew because she woke up with her hair wet, and wet towels in the bathroom.  Another sleepwalking friend I once went on a camping weekend with (back in my 20s), and had to wake her up as she was about to leave the tent and set off on a nightly stroll to who-knows-where… I remember her staring at me with her eyes wide-open, but talking complete nonsense.

As for myself, I’ve never been a sleepwalker, as far as I know. I.e. if I’ve been up in the night I usually have some recollection of it; and I’ve never before found anything mysteriously out-of-place in the morning!

I’m not sure what to think…

(It’s not my clock in the picture but it’s of similar kind and size.) 

    

Old Things We Don't Know

At the top of my sidebar (as you might have noticed) I have an automatic quotation gadget, over which I have no control. Today's quotation, however, happened to fit in rather well with my last post (Ancient Times), so I thought I'd nail it down in a post of its own: 

There's nothing new under the sun*, but there are lots of old things we don't know.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

 *This in turn is a Biblical quote:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; *there is nothing new under the sun.
(Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Ancient Times

"Time it was, and what a time it was, it was..."
~Paul Simon, Bookends~

In my post yesterday I wondered a bit "on the side" why, in the Book of Genesis, it says "and there was evening, and there was morning", instead of the other way round. (Did God work nightshift?) I did have it at the back of my head, that the Jewish ideas about when the day started were or are different from how we look at it today... So I checked it up. And thought I might as well share my findings:

In the era before the modern clock, a specific hour of the night could not be precisely known, whereas an hour of the day was easily determined by sighting the location of the sun. This meant that the day had to be reckoned either from the beginning of night or the beginning of day.

Both ways of looking at it existed in Biblical times. The Egyptians considered the day to start at sunrise. The Babylonians considered it to begin with the night. (The Israelites were under Egyptian influence for a while, but Babylonian later.)

In Jewish tradition, the day begins with the onset of night (the appearance of the stars), followed by the morning (which technically begins with the appearance of the North Star). Or, sunset and sunrise respectively.

So the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday night and ends with the appearance of the stars on Saturday night; and the same is true for the major holidays.

Beginning the day with the night is also considered a metaphor of life itself. Life begins in the darkness of the womb, then bursts into the brightness of the light and eventually settles into the darkness of the grave, which, in turn, is followed by a new dawn in the world-to-come.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said: "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day" and the darkness he called "night". And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day. (Genesis 1:1-5)

Sources:
http://www.aish.com
http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-jewish.html
+ a Swedish Encyclopedia of the Bible

And there was morning, and there was evening...

... Actually, for some reason, in the Book of Genesis, they have it the other way round: "And there was evening, and there was morning..."   Strikes me that I have no idea why, so shall have to look into that some day. But not right now; I'm too tired! Besides my own Creation work (getting things installed on the new computer), I had some things to sort out on behalf of my dad. What with making phonecalls, and waiting for people to call me back etc... When I was done with that I was too tired to go out (as I had intended). Lay down to rest... and fell asleep... and when I woke up... there was evening! (Well, late afternoon, anyway.) I wish you a good one, if yours is still before you. Not much left of mine!



Some days, it's an upside-down world...

Summer Time

It's that time again. Time to set the clock forward one hour in the middle of the night. As if it were that simple! Is there anyone out there who has only one clock?!

When I'm at home, I don't like wearing my watch. So I have clocks everywhere. Twice a year I wonder why! Now let me see...

1. Wrist watch.
2. Alarm clock by the bed.
3. Kitchen clock.
4. Clock on the wall in the hall.
5. Clock on the wall in the study.
6. DVD-recorder.
7. VCR.
8. Cordless telephone.
9. Telephone by the bed.
10. Small stereo in the bedroom.
(Not very important, I rarely put that on timer.)
11. The computer, but that takes care of itself.
(The only thing that does!)

Is that all? Hm. Surely I have forgotten something. Oh yes.

12. Another wrist watch.
13. The mobile phone.
14. The MP3-player.
15. Better check the new small TV/DVD player too.

At least the stereo in my living room does not have a clock. Or does it?

The clock in the picture is not mine. It belongs to a museum.

The hardest thing for me though is usually to reset my inner clock. Shouldn't really matter so much to me these days, since I don't have to get up and go to work early in the morning. I still usually have difficulties with it; it brings me out of rhythm. We'll see how it goes...

Looking back in my memory, I could have sworn it was in the 70s we started switching to summer time in Sweden. Checking my facts in Wikipedia, I find that it wasn't until 1980. Maybe it was discussed earlier? In my memory, I can hear some of the farmers in the church I belonged to back in the early 70s discussing the matter. They were convinced the cows couldn't handle it. The problem is that in 1980, I was living in another town since five years, and in the church I was going to then, no one was concerned with what cows might be thinking. My brain must be mixing things up!

Ah well. Now I'd better get started on my clock round, or I'll be even more mixed up tomorrow!

Going Round In Circles

You might have been imagining me getting all caught up in scrapbooking inspiration after last weekend. Sorry, that's not it. It's just been One of Those Weeks. As the title implies: Going Round In Circles, without much evidence that I've accomplished anything at all.

Yesterday is a perfect example of the Great Nothing. First, I woke up to find myself (like the day before) enclosed by thick gray fog outside the windows. It was also raining - which, however, I sort of welcome now, to help get rid of the snow. So, in spite of the rain, I went out to post a letter that I had written the day before. When I eventually reached the letterbox (still having to make a lot of detours because of ice and unexpected lakes in the streets), I found that the letter was by then sort of turning back into pulp, because it had been sticking up out of the pocket where I kept it during the walk, and raindrops had been running down my raincoat and finding that absorbing envelope a nice place to gather...

So the letter went back home with me again, or I might have caused the whole content of the letterbox to merge into one wet illegible lump that no one would know what to do with. Luckily I had the text of the letter saved in my computer, so I've printed it out again. Maybe this afternoon or tomorrow I'll put it in a water-proof and carefully zipped-up bag and take the bus into town to try to find some place dry to post it...

Now, if you're wondering why on earth I still persist in using this old-fashioned method of posting things, the answer in this case is that it was a letter to my Letter-Writing Friend who has recently gone off to Spain again. And while there, they only check their emails occasionally at the local library.

Well. Later on in the day, yesterday, I sat down to write an email-letter to another friend. Then, when pressing the send button, instead of the usual confirmation that it got sent off, I found myself facing a sign telling me to "log in". Eh? So I logged in. And the only trace I found of the email was the first few lines of it saved as a draft. The rest of it had just disappeared. (I checked with the intended receiver - it had not turned up at his end either.) I guess I got disconnected from my broadband for a while and was put in an "off line" mode which allowed me to keep writing, but without access to the auto-saving function. Why are there no warning signs popping up for that kind of thing, while you keep getting "warned" about all sorts of other things all the time which you are already fully aware of?!

Anyway. That's how to keep yourself busy without having anything to show for it.

So today, so far, feels a bit like Groundhog Day (the movie) - repeating yesterday! Only hopefully with somewhat better luck. Perhaps.

PS. The photo is of an old sundial in our museum park.

Where Have All The Hours Gone?

For no apparent reason, I've continued to feel abnormally tired all week. Around two o'clock p.m. some invisible power hits me with a hammer in the head, turns my body temperature down to ice cold and puts me in hibernation under a mountain of blankets for two or three hours. Curiously enough, my night sleep on the whole does not seem much affected by these extra hours spent in Nothingness.



Today I probably didn't get more than one proper hibernation hour in the afternoon because I had to go down to the laundry room between naps; plus I was up extra early in the morning to make a couple of Authority phone calls. (Authorities, especially Health Care Authorities, have very early habits.) The result is that at 6.30 p.m. I keep glancing at the clock on the wall to check if it isn't bedtime soon!

Should perhaps point out that the clock in the pictures is not mine. The photo was taken in one of the cottages in our museum park back in the summer.

Old Friends & Lyrics

Simon & Garfunkel - Old Friends concert, 2003

My favourite songwriter since nearly 40 years is Paul Simon. I "discovered" him (Simon & Garfunkel) when I was 15, and I still listen to his/their records. The old LP:s I had, I now have on CD. (I still have the LP:s as well, but no record player to play them on...)


My previous post - "The Age Thing" - made me think of the lyrics to

Old Friends, from the album Bookends (1968)

(Paul, born in October 1941, was then 26)

Old friends,
Old friends,
Sat on their parkbench
Like bookends.

A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends.

Old friends,
Winter companions,
The old men
Lost in their overcoats,
Waiting for the sun.

The sounds of the city,
Sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends.

Can you imagine us
Years from today,
Sharing a parkbench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy.

Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears.

Time it was
and what a time it was.

A time of innocence,
A time of confidences.

Long ago... it must be...
I have a photograph,
Preserve your memories,
They're all that's left you...

I loved Paul's music when I was 15 and I still do - so that part of myself remains pretty well "preserved"! Some of the early songs also bring back lots of memories; for example of old friends with whom I used to listen to the records and interpret the lyrics back in the 70's.

But I also love that he has kept moving on as a musician. Come to think of it, isn't this really a great illustration of what I was discussing in the previous post: a musician still playing the old music, but also continuing to write new songs and trying out different kinds of music and rhythms...

On his 2006 album, Surprise, 65-year-old Paul also discusses the problems of growing old:

It's a blessing to wash your face in the summer solstice rain.

It's outrageous a man like me stand here and complain.

But I'm tired. Nine hundred sit-ups a day.

I'm painting my hair the colour of mud, mud okay?

I'm tired, tired. Anybody care what I say?

No! I'm painting my hair the colour of mud.

---

Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone? God will.

Like he waters the flowers on your windowsill.

(from the song "Outrageous")

The Age Thing

My "Quotation of the Week" for this week (16/09, see post below), from Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, is from a chapter about a 72 year old woman, who is trying to convince some children, that she, too, was once a little girl their age. She shows them some things she has kept – a ring, a comb, a picture – but they refuse to believe her. There is no proof, in their eyes, that the picture is not of some other person. In the end, it is the old woman who has to give in, remembering a discussion she once had with her husband (it is his words in the quotation). The only way she can become friends with the children is to "let go of her past" and agree with them that she has always been seventy-two:

At last they were good friends.
"How old are you, Mrs. Bentley?"
"Seventy-two."
"How old were you fifty years ago?"
"Seventy-two."

This is of course a little extreme, but dealing with time is a major theme in this novel: both children and old people are looking for ways to preserve their memories as well as catching the moment. (Making dandelion wine is one symbol of it: "Every time you bottle it, you got a whole chunk of 1928 put away, safe." )

When I first entered those lines into my quotation notebook, about being forever "trapped in the present", I was in my mid-twenties. Now I'm approaching my mid-fifties, and I'm still trying to figure out whether I really agree with the quotation or not. I do agree with the first sentence: "No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now." And probably, when I was nine, I found it hard to quite imagine what it would be like to be old. I do remember my grandmother showing me pictures of herself as a little girl, and finding it hard to really make the connection. As one grows older, though, surely the present self must still include all of the past selves? But at the same time we cannot go back; we cannot skip over the experiences we have already gathered; all we can do is keep adding to them, in the present. "You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen."

Click on the label Dandelion Wine below for more quotes from this book.

Quotation of the Week (16/09)

"No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seveny. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or and old now, but there is no other now to be seen."
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Time Travel

Illustration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

(Inspired by: The One-Minute Writer: Friday Fiction: Time)


This Sunday morning, at two o'clock, we are supposed to time travel again, by setting our clocks forward one hour. The only effect this will have on me (as every year) is to throw me out of rhythm once more, just as I was beginning to find it again after the winter darkness. "Summer time", they insist on calling it in this country – even though I woke up this morning and found the world outside all white again!

No, pretending to travel just one hour forward in time is really not enough to make the experience exciting in my mind…

Real time travelling has little to do with pushing the hands of a clock backwards or forwards, or turning an hour-glass upside down. That doesn't get you anywhere! You cannot pass through into a different time dimension as long as you are still aware of how time runs in this one. If you try, this will only result in serious stress syndrome, which might take you years to recover from.

What you have to do is stop time by forgetting it altogheter. Pull out the plugs, remove the batteries, or put your clocks in another room so you can't see or hear them. You should also shut out all other kinds of noise that remind you of the time of day, or year. Then go to your bookcase, pull out a book that takes place in the time you want to visit. Make yourself comfortable, and open the book...

Don't expect the transfer to take place immediately; at first you will probably still be too much aware of your own familiar surroundings. Sometimes it doesn't take place at all; you might have to try again another day. But remember, the key to time-travelling is not (as you might think) trying to push time forwards or backwards, but rather sideways. And the opening to the other dimension is different in each book. It might actually sometimes be a glance at a clock (in the book, mind, not in the room where you started reading!); but it could just as well be a hole in the ground, a wardrobe door, or the turning of a page in a book within the book…

… but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet… and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit hole under the hedge.

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland


… in the hall below, there was a clock, and through the night he would hear it strike the hours. It was a grandfather clock and very old. Mr Frith of Leighton Buzzard came each month to wind it, as his father had come before him and his great-grandfather before that. For eighty years, they said (and to Mr Frith's certain knowledge), it had not stopped and, as far as anyone could tell, for as many years before that. The great thing was – that it must never be moved. It stood against the wainscot, and the stone flags around it had been washed so often that a little platform, my brother said, rose up inside. And, under this clock, below the wainscot, there was a hole…

Mary Norton, The Borrowers


Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree-trunks, she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out. (She had, of course, left the door open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to do to shut oneself into a wardrobe.)

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe


He made himself comfortable, picked up the book, turned to the first page and began to read The Neverending Story...

Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

(the sentence translated by me from the German original)