Telling Time

There are so many ways to keep track of time, and for the past three weeks my new favorite is this one: a little graphic on my computer screen tells me the exact percentage of fullness of the moon, at any given moment. It is astonishing how quickly it moves through its phases, astonishing and gratifying, this month in particular, because on the night the moon is full it will be full for me in a place that has gained some prominence in my imagination, will be full while I will be on a mountaintop at some remove from the mountains where I usually live, and I am imagining how on that night, the moon will be bending on me in particular its mild light. For now, the increasing moonlight is illuminating the still-imaginary path I will be taking up that mountainside, but that's today, when, according to the graphic, she stands at 66% full. At 100%, the path will be real, the light will be real falling on it.

Mornings I consult a few almanacs, usually first before I read anything else. Often, they are the day's news, though they give a mostly peaceful backward view through history rather than a squinty-eyed attempt at divining what it is that's walking through here now. I have astronomical almanacs and agrarian almanacs, I have an antique charmer of an almanac that is full of the news of the day, that day having taken place three or four hundred years ago. This particular volume is helpfully filled in with medieval lore and customs and recipes against all manner of illness.

I'd like to write my own almanac. I would have an ephemeris in mine, and a selection of apothecary's appendices. But mostly mine would be full of superstitions, you might call them, or how to read the signs, is the way I'd be likely to put it. I'd like mine to be an Almanac of Coincidence, Synchronicity, of Marvels You'll Meet Around The Corner. For instance I would include these new bits of knowledge I've gleaned: when you find a small white stone you are about to find a larger white stone. The silver of April invariably gives way to the gold of the month of May. A late snowfall means new love. The signs that predict new love are the best signs of all, and I would want to include them by the dozens, enough signs that everyone who reads my almanac could be confident that new love like full moonlight is about to fall across their path.