Goines On: Shortcut to 1976

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The night following Goines’ successful experiments with shifting to past years from the 2021 calendar, his thoughts were troubled. Why was he even thinking about this? What did it gain him – or anyone else? As a painter had said to him when he touted his calendar mnemonic to her, “Just consult a calendar for the year in question!”
    And anyway, when did anyone even need to know what day of the week a date in some other year fell on? Wasn’t this mnemonic thing just a parlor trick? Poets – like that painter who hadn’t been impressed – concerned themselves with trees and flowers, light and shade, human and geological history, man’s failings and successes, life and death.