Chronography

It has been one second since I began typing this text and one second since I began reading this text. It has been fourteen seconds since I began typing and now here at the second sentence of this text five seconds since I began reading. It has been forty seconds since I began typing this text and eight seconds since I began reading it. By the fourth sentence I find it has been one minute exactly since I began typing this text and twelve seconds since I began reading the same text. At the fifth sentence I discover it has been one minute and twenty-two seconds since I began typing and sixteen seconds since I began reading. Now in the middle of this sixth sentence I have clocked one minute and forty-four seconds since I began typing and twenty seconds since I began reading. This next sentence marks two minutes and two seconds that have transpired since I began typing this text and twenty-seven seconds since I began reading the self-same writing. Now at two minutes and nineteen seconds I am up to the eighth sentence on this page, although it has taken me only thirty-two seconds to read to this same point. A period of two minutes and forty-eight seconds has passed since I began typing this text and thirtyseven seconds since I began reading this text. It has now been three minutes and seven seconds since I began typing this text and I am finally at the tenth sentence, which has taken me forty-three seconds to attain by reading. By the start of the eleventh sentence I find I have been typing for three minutes and thirty seconds and have been reading for forty-nine seconds. I have been typing now for three minutes and forty-four seconds and reading for fifty-three seconds. Here now the stopwatch tells me I have been typing for three minutes and fifty-eight seconds but reading for merely fifty-eight seconds-three full minutes behind. At what I believe is the fourteenth sentence I have been

typing for four minutes and ten seconds, almost half a minute shy of John Cage’s notorious ‘silent’ piece, and I have in fact kept quiet since I began typing except for the clatter of the plastic keys on the laptop keyboard, which I do not hear while reading, which I have been doing for one minute and nine full seconds. Fifteen sentences into this experiment I have been steadily typing for five minutes and seven seconds but reading for only one minute and fifteen seconds. I have now been typing for five minutes and twenty seconds and reading for one minute and twenty-two seconds. I have now, even with all the constant backing up to make corrections for spelling errors and poor dactylography, been typing for five minutes and forty-five seconds and reading, with all the inevitable saccadic jumps and distractions, for one minute and twenty-six seconds. Just over six minutes and seven seconds have elapsed since I began typing and exactly one and one-half minutes have elapsed since I set to reading. By the clock, I have now been typing for six minutes and twentyeight seconds and reading for one minute and thirty-five seconds. This, the twentieth sentence, registers a duration of six minutes and forty seconds of typing, and one minute and forty-one seconds of reading. I have been typing now for six minutes and fifty-seven seconds and reading for precisely one minute and forty-seven seconds. I have now been typing for seven consecutive minutes and an additional thirteen seconds and wonder how this project would be different if I knew how to properly touch-type rather than pursue my practiced but erratic and error-prone forward and backward hand-waving haste. At seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds I am now at the twentyfourth sentence and have been reading to this point for one-hundred and seventy seconds, surprised that I have not wondered yet about speed-reading or how this project would be different if I were not dyslexic or did not have all the retarding coping mechanisms to compensate. In all events I have now been typing for eight minutes and twelve seconds and reading for two minutes and one spare second. At this sentence I find the stopwatch clocks me at eight and one-half minutes exactly for writing and two minutes and five seconds for reading. I have now been typing for eight minutes and fifty seconds but reading for only two minutes and eleven seconds. Exactly nine minutes since I began typing I have come to this point in the text, which memorialises precisely two minutes and seventeen seconds since I began reading what I have written. It has now been nine minutes and fifteen seconds since I began typing and two minutes and twenty-seven seconds since I began reading, though I wonder if my typing is improving, that is, becoming faster, while my reading slows as I grow increasingly bored. In any case it has now been nine minutes and forty-nine seconds since I began typing and two minutes and thirty-five seconds since I began reading. At the palindromic ten minutes and one second I observe that I have typed about two and one-half pages and read for about two and one-half minutes. It has now been ten minutes and nineteen seconds since I began typing and two minutes and thirty-seven seconds since I began reading. It has now been ten minutes and thirty-four seconds since I began typing and one-hundred and sixty seconds since I began reading. It has now

been ten minutes and fifty-one seconds since I began typing and two minutes and forty-three seconds since I began reading. It has now been eleven minutes and five seconds since I began typing and two minutes and forty-seven seconds since I began reading. It has now been eleven and one-third minutes since I began typing and two and five-sixths minutes since I began reading. It has now been eleven minutes and thirty-one seconds since I began typing and two minutes and fifty-four seconds since I began reading. It has now been eleven minutes and forty-nine seconds since I began typing and two minutes and fifty-eight seconds since I began reading. It has now been eleven minutes and fifty-eight seconds since I began typing and I am wondering if I will stop at the bottom of the page or if I should go for a set period of time instead, though if I were a steady typist the space and time should equate according to a fixed rate-especially since the words I am using in this text are not very varied. In any event, this current sentence commemorates a dozen minutes and forty-seven seconds since I began typing, exactly the track-length of Vito Acconci’s Ten Packed Minutes in the Electronic Arts Intermix reissue and since it has now been exactly thirteen minutes to the second since I began typing I will stop here, merely noting that three minutes and fifteen seconds have expired since I began reading and if you had been keeping track you would know how long you have been reading-even with all the skimming and skipping-too.