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Poor Will's Almanack: August 20 - 26, 2019

sundial
Nick Olejniczak
/
Flickr Creative Commons

It seems that the same day never returns, that any act is done when it is done. It seems that at the end of August, summer is over. It seems that this summer can never come again.

Memory easily shows, however, that events do not end when they take place. Like the waves that form the Butterfly Effect, all happenings ripple time. And instead of receding from a present tense, this infinity of instances spins far out and then returns over and over again like a shower of shooting stars, shining children of comets.

The events of circular, Sacred Time, tell the same stories in time with the Earth’s spin around the Sun. Every Christian year, Jesus is born, dies and rises again. Every Jewish year, Moses leads the chosen people toward the promised land. Every Muslim year, believers are renewed with fasting.

In a sense, personal memory takes this cycle further, creating ing a sort of Radial Time in which memory pierces the concentric rings of consciousness from the present to the center of a  psychic core. Linear time of the calendar loses its power and sense, the past and present blend together.

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fourth week of Late Summer. In the meantime, you might think about how this summer really is not only not over; it has only begun.

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Bill Felker has been writing nature columns and almanacs for regional and national publications since 1984. His Poor Will’s Almanack has appeared as an annual publication since 2003. His organization of weather patterns and phenology (what happens when in nature) offers a unique structure for understanding the repeating rhythms of the year.