WHEN I IMAGINE my life stretched out in a line from the moment of birth to “closing time” at death, events appear episodic and disconnected. Some experiences overlap, even crash into one another but all occurrences are moving in a uniform direction from the present into the future. Life on the flatline forward has the tone of a child telling a story who punctuates it with "and then... and then... and then...." This straightforward style of living doesn't tell much about where we are at this particular moment as compared to all the rest. A flatliner calendar has the required