There's a jam jar on the sill, half full of watch guts. Gears, tiny screws, a bent hairspring, the crystal in two pieces. My brother took watches apart at the kitchen table when we were kids and never once got one back together. Our mother called it a waste of an afternoon.

I've been gluing them onto a panel for six weeks. Not making a watch. Not making anything recognizable. Just laying them where the paint thinned out, letting them sit in the wet ground like they fell there.

Problem is the light. Between 2 and 3 the acrylic goes matte and the metal reads as gray lint. After 4 it's gold again and I can't see whether the placement is right. So I've been working on the same 8 inch square for a month, moving screws a quarter inch, waiting for the light to come back around so I can hate it properly.

I used to think this was stalling. Now I think the waiting is the work and the gluing is just what my hands do while I wait.

Anyway. If you've got a thing you can only do at one hour of the day, I want to hear it, because I'm starting to suspect I've built my whole practice around a window.