Artefacts & Fictions: #3 - Opera Calendar from Pisa

This is a calendar I bought in 2003 at the Galileo Airport in Pisa. Thelma and I had spent a week in Florence (with my sister and her then-boyfriend) and were on our way back to England. My main reason for buying the calendar was to use up the euros I had in my pocket. I can’t remember how much it cost, except to say it cost exactly what I had left.

The calendar is made of two pieces of cardboard bound at the corners by metal clips. Between the cardboard are wheels with numbers, one with the days of the week and another with months, all in Italian. The cover, as you can see, is a reproduction of a poster for a production of Otello, complete with a portrait of Verdi and photos of the theatre where it was being performed. At this point I have to apologize for the blurriness. I am still trying to master the intricacies of laptop photography.

When I first hung the calendar in my office at home, I religiously made sure that the right date, day and month were showing. Perhaps “superstitiously” is a better adjective, since part of me felt that something might go amiss if the calendar was not set correctly every day. I’m not sure exactly what I thought might go wrong. Maybe I was afraid that if I left it alone I would go through some kind of Groundhog Day scenario where I was forced to relive the same day over and over. Or maybe I just believed that it was a small ritual to start the day off right.

Whatever it was, gradually over the years I have become more lax in changing the calendar, although I haven’t given up on it entirely. I may let a day or two (sometimes more) pass before I eventually set the thing right. I’m not exactly sure what that says about my state of mind over the past seven years, except maybe that I’ve grown lazier (not exactly front page news).

But what has stayed with me is what attracted me to the calendar in the first place. Unlike other calendars around the house, this one shows no yesterday or tomorrow, only today. One can’t map out an agenda with it or plan for the future. One can only be reminded of today (if I’ve done my job and remembered to set the thing) and the value of staying in the present moment.