Running Into A New Year
Girls on the Page Newsletter #3
Here we are, in the strange and serene final stretch of the year. This week traditionally feels ripe with otherness: the abandonment of plans, rules and structure. Toward the beginning of the pandemic people would joke that life suddenly resembled the span between Christmas and New Years. In a way we never returned to whatever ‘normal’ was. After a month of feeling a bit unmoored, I’ve decided to grow sea legs, grant myself permission to lean into the aftermath of holiday mayhem and laze, burrow, nest, not apologize. But I’ve also been reflecting, planning, seeking comfort, trying to be gentle with myself, dreaming of what I would like to do, see, make, read and experience in 2023.
During this week of reflection I’ve been combing through the slightly overwhelming collection of quotes and poems that I’ve amassed over the last several years. Many of the quotes reflect thoughts about these very days, the last and beginning of the year. We have Anaïs Nin’s I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me, and Susan Sontag’s I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage. In her poem ‘i am running into a new year’ Lucille Clifton notes that the old years blow back like a wind. I also love the line from Margaret Atwood’s ‘Circe/Mud Poems’ - Last year I abstained, this year I devour without guilt, which is also an art.
I strive to greet each year with an unflinching tranquility, on the first of January taking effort to avoid glancing at the clock, limiting cellphone use, thoughtfully selecting a book to spend the day getting lost in. Everything that must be done can wait. If I venture outside, I subscribe to Kim Addonizio’s train of thought, wanting to resolve nothing, yearning to suspend the oddity of January first.
A little longer in the cold. Blessing of the rain.
New Year’s Eve, to me, signifies a united holding of breath, a fleeting moment where it seems magic is not only around the corner, but possible. People believe in themselves this time of year, they believe in the future. There is poetry in that feeling. With midnight comes an exhale, and with New Year’s Day comes a crash, however subtle. Perhaps that’s the feeling of otherness in the air: the thousands of hangovers, simultaneous reality checks, a slow acknowledging that the holidays are over, that soon we’ll resume “real life”. We no longer have tinsel and champagne and Christmas carols to buoy us: how many songs are there about January? How many of them don’t depress? But on January 1st, for one last day—a few hours at least—the drab winter rain is still beautiful and traces of magic linger. The mirage lasts and the old years blow back like a wind.
Kinda nice