Scions of a Restless Soul

This is a test. Imagine yourself on a wide avenue. Trees hunch over you as you trudge along, rustling the leaves of red and brown and every shade in between. A cool draught overtakes you, nudges you forward, where you spot in the horizon a figure. At first shadow, then a shape, then an alluring stranger, who approaches and asks, “Excuse me, do you know what time it is?” You smile as you check the time.

What watch do you see? (If you took out a pocket watch, this post has nothing new to tell you. If you took out your handphone, keep reading.)

Which watch stereotype are you?

Of those 4, I'd go for the Girard Perregaux Jackpot Tourbillon, though I'm actually a pretty mean poker player.

While these stereotypes may not be accurate, I think a watch does say something about its owner (and screw Patek Philippe's "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation."). What exactly does it say? Let's look at some watches first. (All links open in new tabs.)

If digital and analogue faces are too easy to read...

For the budding home casino (read “gambling den”) owner. Incidentally, a great way to fund a watch collection.

We're getting close to the answer. It's not meant for telling time; it just happens to tell time.

Okay so this isn't a watch. But who cares? It's a quasi-perpetual motion machine dammit!

As we have seen, haute horlogerie is nothing but intellectual wankery by self-absorbed eccentrics working in an insular field who apply their efforts to pushing the boundaries of obsolete technologies in order to satiate the whims and fancies of an exclusive group of men with too much money to spare but who are eager to show that they are different from all those other men with too much money to spare by the purchase and hopefully singular possession of such ostentatious timepieces so as to lengthen their cocktail-party-penises...

...and end up producing portable masterpieces that exemplify the human spirit. Because if being human means trying the hitherto-untried just because we can, and finding our selves, our individuality, our hapax legomenon-hood, then the watch is its culmination. Branching off Man on the phylogenetic tree, it is the scion of a restless soul, its hands relentlessly groping a path into an unknown future even as we do.
 
And that's why I like watches.