The school retired its bell in the spring and did not replace it with a tone or a chime or any of the softer technologies that promise the same authority without the metal. For a term the day was held together by watches and by the particular voice of a deputy who stood in the corridor and said, not loudly, that it was time. Some children became punctual in a new way. Some became philosophers. I am interested in who is trusted to mark a change of hour, and in what a community does when the old signal is judged too blunt for the building it served. The bell was not cruel. It was simply loud. In its absence I kept missing the moment a lesson had ended, which taught me that endings are often something we outsource, and then mourn.#
This is an excerpt. The complete piece is in the print and digital edition of Issue 03.