The end of one year is clearly in sight and the turn of a page will bring the new with 365 pristine blank pages for a life to make marks upon or enjoy the still emptiness.
A diary and calendars are always part of any year for me, they are aid to memory, aid to seeing the path ahead and sometimes means to remember that yesterday wasn’t quite as bad as it might feel today.
The diary I use is a largish robust ring bound black covered unremarkable item, except it is totally remarkable to me as blank or tightly scrawled across each page is part of my day to day that gives me sense of having some idea of what I am doing, where I’ve been, who has passed through my life and lots of etc’s.
I say it gives me sense deliberately as often even with quite detailed notes, added pieces of paper, objects stuck to a page I will only still perceive the day through a dense mist but the sense it gives me is of being.
It helps me breath and rest but if anyone else picks the diary up they would probably wonder what it was all about as though there are sometimes appointments written there they are often on the periphery of the page. At the centre of the pages are words single and in sentence that mean something on that day. Not the kind of words, which tell me months later that I ate porridge for breakfast and cleaned the bathroom, those notes go into my day books. Oh yes I have day books too, and the plural is correct.
So there’s a diary that travels with me from room to room and day to day inside and outside, a calendar in the kitchen, next to my desk here as I write, next to work table upstairs and one next to my armchair in bedroom. Each calendar is used in a different way but all reach back to the diary which in turn tries to reach in to a brain and jog its memory and sense of being.
Day books are about lists in the main; lists of items purchased, lists of items being saved for, gifts given, gifts received, people met, sights sounds tastes. The minutia of a small life threatened with being smaller still by a small blip of impaired memory.
The new calendar year is not something I celebrate but seems 2010 is important to note in its coming as I have had a bit of bumpy run up to this moment but bruises and scars aside it feels good to still have ten whole months of my year left to explore and discover. So thought of blank pages on tomorrows dawn is exciting and the sense I have from the diary that lays bulging and battered next to me at this moment is there is much I don’t remember about 2009 but I sense it was quite a year :0)
Now the blank pages beckon me on and the fabulous full Blue Moon tonight can be nothing but a beacon for courage and determination to step out on the next adventure that is my life and know that when all else fails even a blank page can soothe a troubled mind and give me opportunity to relax and not worry about making a mark because the day and I can ‘just’ be.
Words have always been important to me, the sound, the feel of them spoken, the excitement of them read, the difficulty in the writing…words from page, from a radio, at the end of a phone line, in the eyes of someone who smiles in recognition showering me with a thousand words, the mountains silhouetted against a full moon singing of stars and infinite possibility. These and much else in my life find meaning in words. Words made of letters, of colour of shape of meaning to a mind and a heart weary but never careless of this moment I call life.
If I enter this new calendar year with sense of the old year passing it is not of regret or relief it is with the sense that the lessons learned or missed will travel with me lightly for the next blank page beckons and in my own way I know that no page is ever big enough to contain my small day to day life and that can only make me smile.
In dark days or light there is only a moment to stand in but what a moment when it is filled with words that are forged in heart and found in mind expressed in action stillness and love.
Good year to you.
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