Often I read through my journals from years past, going back over notes about flowers, butterfly sightings, rereading descriptions of walks in the woods or fields and along rivers or lakes.
I find that the diary brings images easily to mind, giving color not only to the reimagined landscape but shape to specific years and then to all the years, all the Aprils.
Looking back over each day’s notes, I see something like an autobiography in the entries I have collected.
I live again, in this way of nature, my movement both linear and radial, binding together consciousness of years with birdcalls and the length of leaves and the opening of flowers.
That narrowest of focus creates continuity, connection with a vague mood of the people and events of my life, providing feeling and sense of the whole. The myopia does not exclude all other acts but instead places them almost inconspicuously inside a sprawling, soft and mottled landscape.
So that it is rich to remember and to open those lost days and feelings over and over. Sometimes it seems that souvenirs and momentos cause too much clutter, distract one from the present or the future. Sometimes they are full of pain. Sometimes, though, they break through the pitfalls of the past. They offer maps and recollection, recommittments to visions well spent.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week of Middle Spring. In the meantime, think back to other Aprils, past the bad or sad parts, to the new green life of then and now
