The Guhl Forge

No. 05 · Study

A month is not its first day

If all you know is “April”, a calendar should not quietly turn it into midnight on the first. Each time is kept as finely as it was given, and drawn no finer.

Calendars inherited their shape from paper, and from databases that store every time as a timestamp. Ask one to remember that the orchard blooms in April and it will ask which day, and at what time. Give it only the month and it will usually pick one for you, the first, at midnight, and from then on nothing in the record can tell that invented midnight from a real one.

Here, a time is kept the way it was given. A month stays a month; a year stays a year; a day has no midnight and no time zone. Views then draw each one honestly: a minute as a point, a day as a short mark, a month as a band across its weeks.

Five times at five granularities, 22 March to 9 May 2027 Kept as given: the year is a band across the whole window and beyond; April is a band from its first day to its last; market day is one day; the call is one hour; the train is a pin at 15:40. Forced into timestamps, each becomes a pin at the start of its unit: midnight on 1 January, midnight on 1 April, midnight on 17 April and 15:00, claims nobody made. 22 Mar 29 Mar 5 Apr 12 Apr 19 Apr 26 Apr 3 May 10 May The long-walk year 2027 · year The orchard in bloom 2027-04 · month Market day 2027-04-17 · day A call at three 15:00, Lisbon · hour The 15:40 train 15:40, Lisbon · minute ← continues continues →

Each time is drawn as finely as it was given, and no finer. Four of five pins now claim a precise moment nobody stated. Nothing in the record can tell them apart from a real midnight.

Illustration · made for this site

Five invented points, each with a time at a different granularity, on six weeks around April 2027. Switch to “Forced into timestamps” to see the claims a conventional record would make on their behalf.

A view cannot recover what the record threw away

The point is less about calendars than about records. If the record only holds a timestamp, no view drawn from it can know whether the author meant a moment, a day or a whole month. Keeping the distinction at the start is what lets every later view be truthful about it.

It also means a time does not have to say more than it knows. A time on its own asserts no role: it is not a start, a deadline or a reminder until someone says so. An interval, January 2 through 9, is made deliberately, as one fact, rather than guessed from two loose dates that happen to sit on the same thing.

Where it stands

Exists

  • A bank of points that need nothing to be made but a title. A time is optional, and there may be several.
  • Each time given at a granularity, a minute, an hour, a day, a month or a year, and stored that way. A month is never stored as its first day.
  • Day, week, month, year and decade views that draw a month over its span and a minute as a point.
  • Intervals authored as one fact between two times of the same granularity, never inferred from two loose times.

Not yet, or not decided

  • Uncertainty. “Probably the 17th” is a different claim from “April”, and is not represented yet.
  • Richer meanings for a time, such as a deadline or a reminder. A bare time asserts none.