Aztec Calendar

At one particularly bureaucratic time at work I was maddened by the unnecessary and wasted effort that was going into keeping several versions of the departmental calendar, each of which had to be maintained separately, and some of which had to be printed out in a given format and posted somewhere or another where all could see and respond.  My own response was to pin up a colorful rendition of the Aztec calendar, which I declared I was following instead.

And now, again, I’m being dominated and abused by my calendar and scheduling software—all versions ugly, demanding, over-full, uncompromising, and overwhelming.  Again I turn to the Aztec calendar for solace and an alternative way of regarding time and marking days and weeks—whether weeks ruled by deities associated with fermented maguey beverages, or days involving getting eaten whole by long green snakes (more representative of daily doings, surely, than “send supplies to AAR exhibit” or “launch meeting”).

This is my own innovative version of time management, and I can see it as the subject of a highly successful self-help book.  Remember—you read it here first.

images:  La page 12 du Codex Borbonicus;  scene from the Codex Borbonicus, which shows the gods Tlachitonátiuh and Xolotl, while on the side are the 8 to 13 days of the sixteenth series of the ritual series