A Day in the Life

For most of the farm years, I began each day with a new notebook page citing critical information from the Old Farmer's Almanac: sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, moon phase, moon sign, day of the year, factoid.

2/17/91, for instance.

Moon phase, moon sign, sun rise, snakes laying eggs; Napoleon at Waterloo, Boston under 9 feet of snow; Every day, every hour, every teensy tinesy millisecond of time has its own particular history, is itself a repetition of cycles within cycles, and in its moment bequeaths its own ghosts to the future.

That's why, to my mind, these notebooks have all those notations - science, history, astronomy, astrology, folklore - it seems I wanted to keep sight of as many parallel universes as possible. All the stuff I didn't know left uncomfortably breezy gaps and all the stuff I did know was way too much to remember.

Under each of these ritual notations come the lists of things to do that day, comprising my own historical and cyclical existence. In terms of things accomplished, the Old Farmer's Almanac is much more accurate.