auld lang syne

Is it a looking-back? Or a looking-forward? Does the calendar turn if the Times Square ball doesn't drop? At the prick of midnight, the nadir of one year, the apex of the new, that is, the apex before the apex before the start. 00:00. 12:00. The exquisite edge, ultimate cliff, razor-tip Now, never to be repeated, never new again, but now in Now, of Now, for Now, is Now.

Midyuletidemonday

What should we call this interregnum of a day, this diurnal hiatus between years, between nativity and epiphany, birth and discovery, between darkness and satori, this timely peninsula of gray waiting, quotidian quiddity? 

Midyuletidemonday?

calendar musings

Soon December turns to January, and 2016 to 2017. I get that we don't live a year at a time, not even really a day at a time. It's this moment drifting or dissolving into the next and the next and the next and the next. You get the point. Still, I'm eager to bid good riddance to 2016, its upheavals, violence, tumult, blooms, blossoms, sunrises, sunsets, roses, rusts, and secrets. And that's talking about my personal adventures! Let's turn the page!

turn the page

The turned page I am referring to is the calendar, the one on the wall with images of sunlit vineyards and the darker one in my head and along my veins. I welcome its turning, its flip into September, with promises of cooler weather, falling leaves, lighter branches. My August was stormy, tempestuous, and laden with hollow anxiety. (How was yours?) August is gone. It is so yesterday. Its self-inflicted wounds are already scabbing over, hardening, waiting to fall off so that new skin can be brightly born. September song: shed, shed, let go, let go, tweet, tweet. Say farewell to thunder and rain and prepare for wind and snow and sleet. Welcome the gently falling leaf floating in the dusk offering Vesper prayers with no incense but weary sighs. Hello, curled redbud leaf now yellowed still partly heart-shaped settled on yesterday's lawn tomorrow. Greetings, September.

February

now that we've flipped over January only to see the page of February we can declare that spring is creeping in despite wintry mixes and ice and icicles and snow and slush and snowmelt and winter x games and slalom and wind chill and blustery et alia despite all that pitchers and catchers report in 12 days like 12 steps to recovery and even embedded in the corner of the February page is March ready to march or creep into our personal time zones so do not despair spring is almost around the corner February may prove to be brutal and frigid but can we demand of it that it is the last full and entire month of weatherly winter because in March surely there will be some respite from all those despites.