(no subject)
Today is my birthday.
I don’t remember consciously noticing, until yesterday, that my birthday falls on the cusp of actual spring. Just after February turns into March and the word we write on our checks (remember checks?) doesn’t look so long and cold anymore.
My year begins with springtime. This sounds uncharacteristic but hopeful. I care about how things sound, nowadays (remember old words like that?) I am looking for omens everywhere.
This is the day that suddenly feels like the true beginning of the year. Conveniently located in the aura-phase of spring. Taking advantage of that gathering energy. Feels more like a beginning than the cold, percussion-filled mid-season night of December 31. It’s culturally-sanctioned, sure, but the truth is that I have a wad of cultures from whose sanctioning to select. The witches say the year begins at Samhain (some of them) and the Buddhists have another day altogether (the Tibetans anyway) and in the theatre we pretty much all say the season starts in September so, in the end, it just seems like a year is an arbitrary thing and I might as well make it personal. My year starts on my birthday.
I am 52. This is the first day of my 2015. It's an Air year, alchemically. It's a Chariot year, numerologically. These facts together argue for a triumphant emergence from a period of dark-tinged transition. At the very least, an unfolding.
If you want to really grok (if you don’t remember that word, look it up. It’s dorky but useful) an unfolding, you have to pay attention. You have to notice stasis and small changes. And to do that you need a baseline. So I got quiet and asked my head for simple words. Art-less words. Rooted in what my body knew (I almost never ask my body anything - like long-estranged family members we speak only through intermediaries).
At 52, how am I?
I am sick. And sad. And really lonely. And I don’t know what I’m doing, or why.
I’m not ready to be dead yet, but I don’t know what I’m alive for.
All hail, beginnings. Again.
I don’t remember consciously noticing, until yesterday, that my birthday falls on the cusp of actual spring. Just after February turns into March and the word we write on our checks (remember checks?) doesn’t look so long and cold anymore.
My year begins with springtime. This sounds uncharacteristic but hopeful. I care about how things sound, nowadays (remember old words like that?) I am looking for omens everywhere.
This is the day that suddenly feels like the true beginning of the year. Conveniently located in the aura-phase of spring. Taking advantage of that gathering energy. Feels more like a beginning than the cold, percussion-filled mid-season night of December 31. It’s culturally-sanctioned, sure, but the truth is that I have a wad of cultures from whose sanctioning to select. The witches say the year begins at Samhain (some of them) and the Buddhists have another day altogether (the Tibetans anyway) and in the theatre we pretty much all say the season starts in September so, in the end, it just seems like a year is an arbitrary thing and I might as well make it personal. My year starts on my birthday.
I am 52. This is the first day of my 2015. It's an Air year, alchemically. It's a Chariot year, numerologically. These facts together argue for a triumphant emergence from a period of dark-tinged transition. At the very least, an unfolding.
If you want to really grok (if you don’t remember that word, look it up. It’s dorky but useful) an unfolding, you have to pay attention. You have to notice stasis and small changes. And to do that you need a baseline. So I got quiet and asked my head for simple words. Art-less words. Rooted in what my body knew (I almost never ask my body anything - like long-estranged family members we speak only through intermediaries).
At 52, how am I?
I am sick. And sad. And really lonely. And I don’t know what I’m doing, or why.
I’m not ready to be dead yet, but I don’t know what I’m alive for.
All hail, beginnings. Again.