MANILA — The anchor blinks. This must be stated at the outset because it is the detail that discloses everything else. She blinks once every forty-one seconds, measured by this correspondent over a six-minute segment using the second hand of a watch he inherited from his father, which is the most analog instrument available to the task and therefore the most appropriate one. The human average, per the ophthalmological literature this correspondent consulted at the University of the Philippines library the following morning, is once every three to four seconds, or approximately fifteen to twenty times per minute. The anchor blinks approximately one and a half times per minute. The discrepancy is a factor of ten.

The regional television station — this correspondent withholds its name pending a response to his written inquiry, submitted March 18th — introduced the anchor on its evening broadcast without comment. She reads from a teleprompter. Her delivery is competent. Her intonation is correct. Her hair does not move. Her eyes, between blinks, maintain a steadiness that is not so much unnatural as post-natural — the steadiness of something that has learned what blinking looks like without learning why it occurs. Blinking is involuntary. It is the body's maintenance of itself, performed without instruction. An entity that blinks on a schedule has understood the output without the input, which is, this correspondent has come to believe, the governing metaphor of the entire phenomenon.

The station has not responded to this correspondent's inquiry. The anchor continues to broadcast. The blink rate has not changed. This correspondent will continue to monitor. He has purchased a stopwatch.