Calendar Pages

The pages of the calendar yield to me, another page torn free. Yet it is not to me they yield but to the ceaseless march of time.

Pages. Pages. Glossy paper. Does anyone use a real calendar any more?

Days become boxes and boxes become full of scribbled ink. Some days. Other boxes remain empty and, sometimes, those empty days are the best days of all.

The end of the page draws near–the end of the month. What trials await our hero on the next page, in the next chapter?

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.

It is December. It is the last page. But not to worry, there’s a sequel already available in stores called 2022.

Here, in Australia, the air becomes hot and dry. Trees creak and splinter in the heat. There is the smell of smoke, a haze in the air. The sun does not feel warm and comforting but like it has been, somehow, turned up too high.

This blasted wasteland, ever-approaching. For when the new year begins and the new calendar is opened, we begin that march anew. That march towards today. That march towards December.

Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Monday.

The names of foreign holidays printed in tiny text. Days of Independence. Days with scribbled-in notes. Is it January already? Is it really 2022?

Not yet, of course. Not yet. But we are marching there. And if it were a castle on a hill we would be able to see it now, perhaps decked out in festive lighting.

A year ends and another begins and it is nothing but the turning of glossy pages. It is nothing but a cacophony of fireworks. A glass raised in a toast. Another rotation around the sun.

Around the sun?

Around the sun we spin and whirl and days skip by like hopscotch squares drawn in chalk. In time the rain will wash them away, but we will draw them again. Over and over. And we will hop across those squares. And we will keep on turning calendar pages.