Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

'I sat down and thought very seriously for a long time, and the result ofmy reflections was that I decided to make a "dulcimer" and to devise, withthe help of a friend, the dervish Kerbalai Azis Nooaran, a mechanism of smallhammers, which in striking would produce the required sounds." 'That same evening I went to see this friend of mine, the dervishKerbalai Azis Nooaran." 'Although this friend of mine was regarded by his comrades andacquaintances as rather a queer fellow, they all respected and esteemed him,for he was very intelligent and learned, and often raised questions thateveryone, willy-nilly, had to ponder seriously." 'Before his initiation into the dervish order, he had been a professional"watchmaker."'And in the monastery he devoted all his spare time to this favorite craftof his." 'My friend, the dervish Kerbalai Azis Nooaran, had recently, by the way,become greatly intrigued by a certain "bizarre idea", he was trying to make amechanical watch that would show the exact time without the aid of anyspring whateve.r"He explained this bizarre idea of his in the following brief and simplestatement:" ' "Nothing on Earth is absolutely still, since the Earth itself moves On theEarth, only weight is stable and then only in half the space occupied by itsvolume I wish to obtain such a perfect equilibrium of the levers that theirmovement, which must necessarily proceed from the tempo of the movementof the Earth, should correspond exactly to the movement of the hands of aclock, and so on and so forth." 'When I went to see this eccentric friend of mine and explained what Iwanted and what help I expected of him, he at once became very muchinterested and promised to help me in every way he could.