2000 Unrepeatable Days

Here is an extract from a book I picked up at Sem Fim when our Blipper friends were here, and read out loud because it felt so relevant... saved it to share today:


"The diarist Blipper has one essential goal: to freeze time. With each entry, he or she says that on this day, a day that will never again occur in the history of the world, I lived. I lived in this city or that town, upon which the sun shone warmly or the rain fell steadily, I ate breakfast, walked city streets or country roads, drove a car or entered a subway. I worked. I dreamed. Other human beings said witty things to me, or stupid things, or brutal things; or I did the same to them. I laughed. I wept. The newspapers told me about the fevers of politics, distant wars, and who won the ballgames. I experienced a work of art or read a novel or heard music that would not leave my mind. I was bored. I was afraid. I was brave. I was cowardly. I endured a headache. I broke my leg. I loved someone who did not love me back. I suffered the death of a loved one. This day will never come again, but here, in this diary on this journal, I will have it forever. Casual reader, listen: I, too, have lived."
            - Introduction, by Pete Hamill, to the diaries of Edward Robb Ellis


For me, it's also about seeing the beauty around me; us Blippers don't just have words, we also have photos. It's an awesome thing to flip back with the year ago button and remember where we were a year, or two, or three or more ago. I really love Joe's original idea, to remember every ordinary (no such thing, of course) day through just one photo, or sometimes, two.

So, today? Managed to sort bookings on the ferry; we now go from Bilbao on 6th June for twenty days. Mike planted a loquat tree that Delfina gave us. Then lunch with the Padre and Ricardo at the newly re-opened restaurant in Estrela, where there was a gorgeous bunch of roses from the nextdoor garden, and the Padre and I debated abortion and euthanasia... enthusiastically. See extra.

And the storks on the church had four, four! storklets. Can you see the four beaks ... and my discreet 2000?