Albert

There was nothing very peculiar about the weather, the news, or anything else the day  Albert laid and marveled at his clock.  The weather moved toward crispness (just as it always had near autumn), the news was just as full of crime as it was on any other day, and Albert's clock continued to tick, just as it did every other day.  He reflected on his own ups and downs, his busyness and his lulls, and noted the regularity with which all the irregularities of his life had conducted themselves--he also noted that it was now 12:17pm and twenty six seconds, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine.  As he continued counting ticks and tocks (alternately of course, with the ticks falling on the odd numbers and the tocks on the evens: tick "one," tock "two," tick "three," tock "four") he imagined a supernova that would engulf the earth, and his clock with it.  He wondered if anything else could ever stop the consistency of this beat, for nothing was ever as sure to Albert as the next moment.  He never knew what any next moment would bring, nor did he know the way in which he would respond to any of fate's gifts, and he had no idea (though he thought about it a great deal) how he felt about any of this, but he was always sure that one moment always preceded another.  He was sure that each time a wave ran up the shore it would come as far as its adventure would allow it, then make a hasty retreat back into it's mother, the ocean.  He was sure that each breath he inhaled was the middle child of his lungs, which bore before and after it two outward gusts of wind.  He listened as his clock and his heart monitor synchronized for a moment, then came apart, and came together once again--each only for a moment.  And as he breathed, and counted the ticks and the tocks, he felt an overwhelming peace.  There was very little that Albert felt he truly understood (though he was an intelligent man), but he knew, beyond all doubts, that even when he breathed out for the last time, his clock would keep on ticking, and the waves would keep on dancing.  He was not afraid of his death, or of the ritardando of the beeping that came from his heart monitor.  The moments of his life had been lived in earnest, and to a steady beat; and for this he was glad.