Couldn't find a decent month-at-a-glance daybook so sprung for a Moleskine. It's useless-- delicate lines, pale numbers, and date written in the bottom centre of each square, precisely where I want to put the day's temperature. Really, four years of eheu fugaces ought to be enough. I should stop this desperate attempt to record what's happened (because really, the deadly daily minutia make for dispiriting reading) and let the time flow past me Buddhistically, living only in the moment.
Trouble is I remain firmly convinced that the past has its uses, but one needs a record of it to use it properly, since memory will insist it's either much better or much worse than it was. At the very least, when anxiety strikes as it so tiresomely does this decade, I need the reassurance 'I can do this because I have done this.' Every autumn I get antsy about walking after sunset: something to do with failing eyesight and uneven sidewalks and fear of falling. I need a confirmed memory of walking home in the winter, icy sidewalks and black night, no problemo, to counteract it-- only when I'm actually doing it I'm usually not even noticing the fact. Was thinking that today, as I came back over the melting and freezing sidewalks (yesterday's cold like another world)-- 'This is a doddle, remember this for next September.' And was at once ambushed by, yes indeed, September's anxiety. Argh.
