Think of this

[ZenitYerkes]

When they present you with a watch, they are gifting you with a tiny flowering hell, a wreath of roses, a dungeon of air.

They aren’t simply wishing the watch on you, and many more, and we hope it will last you, it’s a good brand, Swiss, seventeen rubies; they aren’t just giving you this minute stonecutter which will bind you by the wrist and walk along with you.

They are giving you —they don’t know it, what’s terrible is that they don’t know it— they are gifting you with a new fragile and precarious piece of yourself, something that’s yours but not a part of your body, that you have to strap to your body like your belt, like a tiny, furious bit of something hanging onto your wrist.

They gift you with the job of having to wind it every day, an obligation to wind it, so that it goes on being a watch, they gift you with the obsession of looking into the jewelry shop windows, listen at the radio announcer, use the telephone service; to check the exact time.

They give you the fear of losing it, of someone stealing it from you, of it falling on the street and getting broken. They give you the gift of its brand and the certainty that it’s a better brand than the others, they gift you with the impulse of comparing your watch with other watches.

They aren’t giving you a watch, you are the gift, they are giving you yourself for the watch’s birthday.

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By Julio Cortazar, from his book "Cronopios and famas"

Who owns who?