What's the tale, Nightingale?
It seems like just yesterday I was standing in uncomfortably tall heels among 400 of my closest acquaintances sipping a glass of champagne. Through what I might say was a haze of various mixed drinks and 2 bottles of hot sake, I found myself ringing in the New Year. Relatively cliche I might add minus any notable 2009 accessories, such as hats, glasses, beads...etc.
The New Year is a fresh start for everyone, and so far I've yet to meet one person who feels differently. It's as if our wrongdoings of the previous year can be undone with a calender change and a resolution, usually one meant to quit our vices and/or reach a new found goal. Perhaps even a goal that has long gone unreached in the past, but in the new year seems all the more attainable. For me, it was simple: Beginning January 1st, I told myself, I will write every day in my Live journal account. One whole year of ups downs, laughs, cries, victories, and regrets all recorded for my personal reflection and enjoyment. It's a wonder I can still manage to both surprise and deceive myself after all these years, as clearly, this has not happened.
Sometimes I convince myself I have multiple sides, like a prism. The colors reflected depending solely upon which side you are looking through . There's a me that has it together. She shows up to work and school on time, homework done, office tasks completed, car clean, apt clean, groceries bought, laundry done. She can have the world on a string. Then I'd like you to meet, well, me. She does not show up to work on time, is habitually 15 minutes late to every event she plans to attend, her homework is late, if ever completed, and she skips the library to meet up at a bar. She'll drink herself into an oblivion until the world melts away along with a few rum soaked ice cubes buried in the bottom of her empty cocktail glass. She isn't completely happy or completely sad. Maybe neither of them are.
There is one thing that makes them both happy, and that's writing. Their worlds tend to collide in what is, for better or worse, the real me that has to fight to get out of bed each morning but makes each day worthwhile, in some delightfully insignificant way. She writes about men, women and life. About trees and sky, stars and earth. Beads dripping from her lampshade and cracks in the sidewalk. Ceiling tiles, rivers, skyscrapers, coffee cups, lemons, trains, pear trees, shadow puppets and shoelaces. Love, hate, honor, respect, deceit and failure. The real, the fake, the unknown, the imaginary and the concrete. She'll bound these concepts together like patches in a quilt and although they do not mend the sick,repair what is broken, resurrect the lost or feed the hungry....they do, for what it's worth, make her a little happier each day. In the end, isn't that all anyone is really looking for?
For those of you who are my friends, who at any point have read something I've written or have had me read something of yours, well this is a non-resolution on this non-new years.
I'm back.