I’m fond of speaking of the Christmas season as a “time out of time,” when the normal “rules” of time are warped, even disregarded. I seem to have gotten a little too deep into that, as I lost a day yesterday!
It’s not hard to lose track of time here on the homestead. In my favorite former life, my work required timing down to the second each work day, which often meant 6 days a week. Now, time is most important for gauging tide levels; we plan less by the clock and more by the calendar. Our most regular planning events come from Aly’s film club and internship schedule; when that alters, as it has now because of the high school’s Christmas vacation, high winds and low temperatures, we’re cut free of even that obligation. Even with daily use of my Franklin planner, it becomes possible to get lost in time.
Whether or not I have any idea what day it is would not be an issue at all, if I could only keep quiet about it. I use Twitter to promote the blog; almost every day I “tweet” a teaser about whatever I’ve posted. Eagerly anticipating tonight’s total lunar eclipse and tomorrow’s Winter Solstice, and thinking the eclipse would be yesterday, I urged people to remember “tonight’s” lunar eclipse.
No big deal. It’s certainly not the stupidest thing tweeted that day. It’s nowhere near the top of the list, even.
What makes this even more ironic is that shortly after the Winter Solstice, on December 23rd, there’s an ancient calendrical event that is, in fact, a Lost Day! Called “The Secret of the Unhewn Stone,” the 23rd is the single blank day in the Celtic tree month calender tradition. Sources say this denotes the quality of potential in all things. I find it ironic that so close to this day, I had a period when I couldn’t fix in my mind what day it was.
This is not to say that I spent the day wandering aimlessly around the homestead, bumping into things, possibly mumbling incoherently. We had a great time making Christmas ornaments, using a rather unusual construction method. We should know today or tomorrow how well it worked. If we have success, we’ll let you know what we did.