ProetryPlace Blog 70:
Accounting for Our Days
The days of the new year are vanishing fast, disappearing one by one. Where does the time fly?
When did humans first attempt to capture time, to count the passing days and seasons, to dare to think of a future that might mimic or be coda to what had gone before?
When did they first observe and somehow note the regular patterns of the powerful Sun in a clear or clouded sky or the phases of the feeble moon? When did they first find courage to confront the fearsome universe of stars and wandering planets to predict their movements in the blackened sky?
Without numbers, how did they count the fleeting days of their existence, the accumulated sunrises and sunsets as the planet earth twisted on its axis and hurtled through the dark vacuum of space, circuiting the life-giving star that we now call the Sun? When did they first comprehend their journey?
Millennia followed upon millennia while the race evolved, still servant to and never master of time. Yet, today we capture time in small square boxes, neatly named and numbered. We page forward in time to plan the future or turn back to recall the past. We do not question why the days of the week number seven, not five nor eleven, or why we even have a timespan called a week. Why is the span of time we call a month no more than 31 days in length but as few as 28; why does February get short shrift but special treatment every few years.
Our imperfect calendar retains many cosmic qualities from the ancient past. Is the seven day week in honor of the seven heavenly bodies whose names they carry or is it ordained by God’s commandment? Even though the span of time we call a month approximates the duration of a lunar cycle, we do not watch with awe as the ancients did while the moon develops horns or waxes back night by night to shine bright and full upon us with reflected light. We merely turn a page.
The Romans of antiquity kept an accounting book called a calendarium. The first day of every month—they had only ten, not twelve, so the naming of the last four in order: Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec , was not incongruous as it is now—was called Kalendae. It was a day when lenders called out the debts of borrowers recorded in the calendarium and, much as we do today, those in debt paid their bills and settled their accounts.
We measure the passing of our days and weeks, months and years with often mundane, if still intensely human, activity. We mark our calendars with celebrations, observations, remembrances. We look forward to repeating the past. At the end, have we settled our accounts?
My past year in Smalltown, USA:
January
taking down the tree
resolutions, brand new calendar
February
under leaden skies
gray, barren branches
March
icy winds
hopeful humble daffodils
April
azaleas, dogwoods, tulips,
forgotten resolutions. Taxes
May
bluebirds, fresh flowers
wilt on fresh gravesites
June
soft scents, warm breezes, I dos,
new tie for Dad
July
the Flag marches by
rat a tat tat
August
a drop of my sweat
falls on my young grandson
September
tiny yellow jackets, eager
to drown in hummingbird nectar
October
autumn gold and red
mottled, shriveled, dead
November
all thankful
but the turkey
December
warm fire, quiet snowfall,
she smiles wrapping my gift
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