Life is tantamount to “keeping track.” It’s a skill to be practiced and an art to be cherished.
Keep track of the days of the week. This is relatively easy. Monday ain’t Sunday. Keep track of the days of the month. A bit more difficult. I can usually tell if the month is in the tens or the twenties. But the difference between January 17 and 18, for instance, takes a finer degree of discernment when your head is busy with stuff, or as the Dutch put it, when your hoofd is bezig met dingen.
Keep track of the members of a group. Two adults take twelve children on an excursion to a museum: six boys, six girls. You know how easy it is to forget who’s where? Distractions, excitement, queues, and now we’re down to, like, four girls and five boys. Mrs. de Alcantara, we don’t know where Pedrito is anymore. We think he sneaked out and took a Greyhound bus to Kalamazoo. He’s impossible, Mrs. de Alcantara! And he convinced two girls to flee with him!
To distract means “to draw in different directions.” To dis-tract, to dis-track, right?
Keep track of moolah, dinero, plata, dough, and spondoolics. Bank statements, receipts, subscriptions that you forgot you signed up for, automated bill payments “so convenient” that the bailiff is now inconveniently knocking on your door.
Keep track of your belongings. At the airport with no passport? ¡Ay caramba! Some years ago I took to wearing a pouch hanging from my neck when I travel: passport, debit card, a pen, earplugs. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but it lessens the likelihood that I’ll forget or misplace my passport.
Keep track of your books on your bookshelf. The other day I was able to locate my copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, the wonderful little volume by Shunryū Suzuki. It was exactly where it was supposed to be, in the section titled “Zen Supposes, Man Disposes.”
Keep track of where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. On a material level, it’s very useful—for instance, when you’re navigating a complicated public-transport system. Have you ever taken a bus from Port Authority in New York City to the boondocks upstate? And you don’t have a ticket yet? And you’re running behind schedule? And you’re a little hypoglycemic and your acuity is leaching out of your brain and spilling all over the grungy floor? Cry, baby, cry!
But keeping track of where you are (and where you’ve been and where you’re going) also works on a metaphysical or symbolic dimension. There’s a huge difference between “being somewhere” and “going somewhere.” Keep track of “being” and “going,” and you’ll “become” in due course. You might “become Grand Central.” (Metaphysics uses a lot of quote marks. Or, as Schopenhauer often said, „Kant konnte und ich kann nicht, canuck!“*)
Keep track of your tasks and commitments. “Honey, I forgot! I just plain forgot!” Sure, sure. One more instance of your forgetfulness and this kitchen knife here will teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.
Keep track of your arguments and anecdotes as you try to convince someone—your banker, for instance, or your blog readers—of something important to you. If you lose track, you lose the banker and the life-saving loan, and you lose the blog subscribers and your “face,” ouch.
Keep track of elements in a sequence. This is memory and understanding, born of attention and commitment. It could be the dance steps in a choreography, or the numbers of flats and sharps in the tonalities of the Circle of Fifths, or every word in the Illiad, which you’ll perform by heart in a forthcoming festival. It’s only 15,693 lines in dactylic hexameter. Perfectly doable if you train yourself in the art of keeping track!
By Watchduck (a.k.a. Tilman Piesk), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. With thanks!
©2021, Pedro de Alcantara
*That’s German for the Samoan proverb, ”E le mafai Kant, ae mafai, canuck!"