Calendar

Hmmm.... yyyeeesss.... I can see that a few things are going to have to change around here ...

For one, I need a new CALENDAR SYSTEM! (stem ... tem ...) (that was an echo)

My Calendar System is very important to me. In my whole life, I need flexibility within framework. In my schedule, I need stuff in colored handwriting inside equidistant, parallel, linear squares.

The schedule has now risen to Urgent status. Bits and pieces of my life are starting to fall off the edges, and I recognize the signs. Forgetting things - especially forgetting on the way to doing, but being so distracted that the doing doesn't get done - this is Detail Overload. I recognize it from other, earlier times.

An erasable wall calendar with lots of weeks viewable at once? I think so. On my desk under my keyboard, or on the wall? Hm. Both, I think. No. Just one on the wall. Or the side of the fridge, as long as I'm in the kitchen with all this guff. And not erasable. That's too flimsy. I can't have things getting smudged off my life. It needs to be more deliberate than that.

This is the calendar from my purse. See the last week of the month? The one coming up? Well, what that says is that I have to be away from the house on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and the next page would show the weekly Saturday due date of "peer review" for these essays we're writing. Translation: First full essay due Tuesday, First draft of second essay also due Tuesday, Reading and reviewing the essays of two other students due Saturday, and Wednesday is the only day I'll have at home to do any of it. I have a whole bunch of framework coming to me from outside my student pursuits, so that is the place I have to start. Some stuff is just Life the Way It Is.

But I am starting to see that some other, more arbitrary framework needs to be in place too. Some of this needs to be personal. Just for me. If at home, I like to take tea at 4:00, for instance. Stuff like that.

Isn't this set pretty? A friend said thank you to me yesterday by giving me this cup, saucer, and plate. (Ironically, the thank you was for my tutoring and mentoring help during my friend's academic work.) I am utterly charmed by them. I've never seen a cup shaped like that before. And now I have porcelain things to use for tea, and I want to use them.

It seems silly, I know. But I think that this time around, everything about school and calendars and responsibility and learning is all turning out to be different.

In my olden days of unaccredited student life, my "education" was all about a system outside of myself. In order to get that degree (useful to me in peripheral lessons learned along the way, but decidedly not useful in any ordinary way), I had to please others. I had to fit myself to a rigid system.

There were equidistant, parallel, linear squares during those four years of school, but there was no mulitcolored handwriting in the squares. Independent thought most definitely not encouraged. Ownership of one's own learning not allowed.

And, back then, when I was still so unformed and newly adult, it is not likely that I would have known what to write in the squares. My own handwriting was not yet saying anything of note. I was still too young.

But it's different now. This is three decades, not three seasons after high school. This time around, the education is about the education. There is Marylhurst University, for one thing. That's entirely different. It isn't a system made of equidistant, parallel, linear squares. This process - the way the school is designed - is something more along the lines of Art. Education as an Art - not education as a skills set.

I attend school this time at a place where things mean things. Leaning into the resistance of students conditioned by conformity in the workplace, the faculty are determined about this. Things can be interpreted, and it is possible to have a different interpretation and still be "correct." It is also possible to learn to interpret. Art isn't without its own vocabulary and rules and methods, but Art is also organic. Fluid. Changing. Recognizable only in motion. Identifiable only in relationship.

My relationship to this pursuit of my own education is that of the adventurer. I have set off to find King Solomon's Mines, and then to return home and write the book. I am not a fool - I will take a guide. I will pack supplies, and I know I have to pay for these things. But I am also not merely on an adventure all my own. For me, the "meaning" of this Art is found in the communication of the ideas. I want to return with artifacts.

art - craft - the made thing
fac - to make or to do - facilitate - facsimile
In archaeology, an artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor.

The questions tumble into my head. Is it character influencing story? Or story influencing character? What do we humans do for each other? With each other? Because of each other? Why?

Obviously, I need a few equidistant, parallel, linear squares. This pursuit needs maps and timelines and nomenclature and tabbed file folders. But what I really need right now is a way to keep track of all these pens in so many different colors. I need to be able to fill in the squares. Literally, on a calendar. And theoretically - at school. And I need to be able to do this without forgetting to put the wet, clean towels into the dryer.