Atoms are punctual?

My watch doesn't do enough to save me, or my planet.

It is a very nice watch, mind you-- it's fancy and has little gold and silver bits and, most importantly, it has the Buffalo Bills' logo and name on it, so that every time (get it) I check my watch I am reminded of my favorite football team (lest I forget...)

But it doesn't run on eco power. It doesn't generate power on its own from any light source available.

It also doesn't keep time atomically. I'm not sure how atomic timekeeping works, but I know that it does, and I know that I want my watch to keep time using the power of atoms. Or the chronicity of atoms. Or the something of atoms, whatever it is that might be, that helps them keep time. Punctuality, maybe.

Whatever it is, I want it, and I want my watch to be set by the "Atomic Signal," which I didn't know existed but which does exist, so somewhere out there a timekeeping station is keeping time and telling watches, everywhere, what time it really is. Watches except for mine, that is. Mine's just guessing, it seems.

My watch also doesn't have two alarms, a 1/100 of a second chronograph, a 90-minute countdown timer, a Greenwich Mean Time display so that I know what time it is in the place where time starts, and all the other features that cram the dial of the watch shown here.

To get all those, I'd have to get one of the
citizen watches for sale at Blue Dial -- specifically, I'd have to getthis watch, the "Citizen JY0000-02E Men's Skyhawk AT Multi-Band Atomic Eco-Drive Flight Chronograph."

That's another thing MY watch doesn't have: a cool name.

A juice box, and incense sticks (Sunday's Poem, 11)

Zozo-ji
by Dana Levin

Buddhist temple, Tokyo One cry from a lone bird over a misted river is the expression of grief, in Japanese. Let women do what they need. And afterwards knit a red cap, pray— In long rows, stone children in bibs and hats, the smell of pine and cooled earth— It was a temple for the babied dead. I found it via the Internet. Where they offered pinwheels and bags of sweets for the aborted ones, or ones who'd lived but not enough… Moss-smell, I can project there. Azaleas pinking the water. When her lord asked her again how it died, she said As an echo off the cliffs of Kegon. — ukiyo: in Japanese it sounds like "Sorrowful World" winds trying to hold each other in silken robes what in English sounds like "Floating World" a joke on the six realms in which we tarry what they called the "Sorrowful World": wheel made of winds trying to cling to each other — A child didn’t jell until the age of seven, in his body. Was mizuko, water-child, what in English sounds like "don't understand"... He was a form of liquid life, he committed slowly to the flesh— and if he died or gestation stopped, he was offered a juice box and incense sticks, apology and Hello Kitty... In Japanese, souls spin red-n-pink rebirth wheels: whole groves whrrrr-tik-tik behind the temple at Zozo-ji... — Sad World. Pleasure World. In some minds they sounded the same— It was a grief aesthetic. Imagining another lit visitor considering a tour, before finding that it needs to start over— Over the misted river. Where a banner hangs, saying, You Are The 10,056th Person To Visit This Site and you are the You who keeps disembarking.

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"Zozo Ji" is a temple or shrine dedicated to lost or miscarried or aborted babies -- visitors place toys and offerings to the children. Such a shrine is based on the concept of "mizuko," the "water child" -- a Japanese belief that children receive their existence slowly as it flows into them over time, like water filling them up. The shrines are intended, in part, to help Jizo, the patron saint of women, children and travelers, find another pathway into being through reincarnation.

The thing about the Qs is true. Possibly.

Albuquerque can be many things to many people -- it can be the headquarters for a secretive group of people trying to bring about the end of all 73 dimensions (as in my ongoing story, "Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World!"), it can be a hard-to-spell stumbling block for kids in the local geography bee, and mosly, it can be... HOT.

Which is why, if you live in Albuquerque -- the only city in the world with two "Qs" in the name -- you need a a decent air conditioning system, and not one of those window-units that will wheeze and sputter and not cool you down at all. You need top-notch AC, the kind you can only find by locating the best Albuquerque HVAC-Air-Conditioning guys around -- which you can do without even any more work: Simply click that link and you'll be led to DHL Mechanical Services, Inc., the best Albuquerqe HVAC guys around.

They don't just sell you some junky stuff like a lot of outfits. Instead, they'll do an inspection of your home to make sure you get an accurate estimate of costs and what you need, and then they'll either fine-tune your older system or help you put in a brand new one.

This summer, you Albuquerquenos don't need to sweat it out anymore: DHL Mechanical Services, Inc., is ready to help you stay cool all summer long.