A Ritual For for Honoring Connections and Growing Friendships from Afar

Amy Yoshitsu and I met at Esalen, one of those delightful “travel friendships” (aka deep, meaningful, and inherently time-bound). I was teaching and she was artist-in-residence, which meant we saw each other nearly every day for a month. But when it was time to say goodbye, I had no idea if we’d ever see each other again. That’s when she handed me her calendar.

“I print about 100-200 of these each year and give them to people come into my life in a meaningful way. I want you to have one.”

Sure, it’s practical (mostly for keeping track of watering 40 plants). But the exchange was a symbol for something bigger. It said, “You’re my people now. You had a presence in my life this year, and regardless of how far apart we may be or how little we may talk in the future, I want you to know that matters to me.” This tool for rigidly marking time is instead a symbolic reminder that time and connection are truthfully quite elastic.

When 2022’s calendar showed up in the mail last week, it made tangible Amy's intention of carrying 2021’s connection into 2022. After texting my gratitude for the gift, we put time on our calendars to zoom in January. Go figure.

In my conversations with Amy, it’s clear that the act of reflecting and creating each year’s list of people is a ritual onto itself. The list becomes a kind of map, a geographical survey of the shape of her social identity, which is to say a particular way of examining who she has been, who she is, and who she is becoming. These lists, created over the course of the year, could be seen almost like tree rings--snapshots of that year’s particular social and environmental conditions that together tell the story of her life.

What would you list look like? Who are the 200 people that have shaped your year? Your life?

PS. An unintended bonus: a calendar of collages makes perfect collage material at the end of the year. Collages becoming collages. Collage Inception.