Changing Perceptions

When I taught, the year began in late August or early September—despite the fact that greeting cards and popular sentiment chose January 1st. When the yellow busses rolled out, the year set out on its march toward June when the year ended. July and August—those months represented summer, a hiatus before it all started again.

For the first few years after I stopped teaching and moved in another direction, I still adhered to that schedule. I even found myself parading down the aisles of local stationery stores— purchasing a new notebook, a few new pens. I did transfer my allegiance to Moleskin notebooks.

A new notebook represented an untrodden beginning—clean, no blots, smudges, or crossed out lines. My new pen—with countless possibilities within its cartridge—contained the nucleus of ideas for stories.

I did eventually learn that ghost images appear on pristine pages unless you clean up the smudges and blots. White Out and erasers aren't sufficient.

Today when I spotted several busses, I realized that I hadn't been to a stationery store within the last week. A seismic shift.

So now I am released from one way of calculating time—