And So It Begins

 

A day just like any other day. That is, if you’re a tree or a river or a rock or a squirrel or indeed, most of Creation. No name or number attached. Just the rhythms of slithering, crawling, creeping, climbing, flying in search of food or escaping becoming another creature’s food. Or the slower rhythms of growth and decay while the light brightens and darkens, the constant, steadfast stars appear to appear (though always there), the earth rotates to hide the sun or reveal the moon. 

 

But we humans are creatures of meaning and so we assign each day a name, connected (thought rarely known) with some grand mythological figure from ancient days, give each day a number and after 28 to 31 of them, give another name to the grander beat of the monthly moon cycle (plus a little), again, with other mostly unknown and unthought-of mythological figures. Like January for Janus, the guardian of gateways with his two-heads-in-one, one looking back to the macro-rhythm we call a year at the same time the other looks forward to the next, both also assigned numbers. The new year is 2024 on the Christian calendar, 5784 on the Jewish one, 4721 on the Chinese calendar, 1402 on the Iranian calendar and some 25 other numbers on other calendars worldwide. We are all the same creatures of meaning, but we don't necessarily agree on the same precise names and numbers. And it matters not a bit. 

 

The sun shines outside my window with the same light as yesterday, but I feel compelled to chant my entire Buddhist sutra book, start cooking a New Year bean soup, begin my annual ritual of re-memorizing some of the 30 or so poems I’ve once memorized. I’m committed to a minimum number of miles to walk or bike today, want the first person I talk to on the phone to be my sister, think about what the first piano piece of the year I play will be and in general, move through this day a bit more consciously, as if how I live today will set the tone for the 365 (it’s Leap year!) days to follow. None of it makes any sense from the plants and animals’ points of view, but again, we are creatures of meaning, determined to search one out that might be hidden in the grand cycle of life and death and/or create our own. 

 

Here I re-commit to this writing, beginning my 13^th cycle around the sun marking each day with my own personal meanings in hopes that some touch some universal nerve that may be of use to a reader—or at least interesting or entertaining. No big dramatic vows or resolutions beyond my hopes to keep doing what I do and love doing. Of course, I will be happy if the new book I’m working on gets published and some opportunities to perform keep coming my way and I am considering collecting my entire history of unpublished poems (which means all of them!) into at least a Kinko’s hard copy, if not an actual book that five people will buy. I do think it’s time to push past my resistance and finally get myself a hearing aid. And I do think it would be rather sweet to get and give a few more hugs and kisses this year. Well, there you go. I guess I have made some New Year’s Resolutions after all.

 

And you, my friend?