Despite all the technology I have at hand and use frequently, nothing replaces a real engagement calendar, and The Old Farmer's Almanac Engagement Calendars have long been my favorites. They lie flat, thanks to their spiral binding, and they are bound in a hard cover that slips into a bookcase just swell at the end of the year, where they will wait to be discovered and read by some grandchild in the future, just as I was able to peruse those that belonged to my grandmother.
I learned more than one might expect from flipping through entries in her desk calendars: how she never quite forgave her hairdresser for retiring, how much more her physical limitations bothered her than she usually let on, how set in some of her ways she was and how flexible she was about others, and in these day to day things which were worthy of notation she wrote a story of her life. Even the most banal entry revealed something about her, about what her real life was like. People edit themselves in journals; an engagement calendar is more like a Twitter monologue. You do it, you think it, you remind yourself of it; you write it on your calendar in broken sentences, punctuation optional. No need for flowery language; no need to explain. Your life as a verb, as it were.
I was delighted to get to work this morning to discover that my 2015 edition had arrived, but here's a true thing:
Did you ever notice how, once you get a next-year's anything, all of a sudden you just can't stand this year's anything anymore?
"People don't realize the that future is just now, but later."
~~ Russell Brand
No comments:
Post a Comment