RANGER AGAINST WAR: Happy New Year! <

Friday, January 01, 2010

Happy New Year!


Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw
on a bank where they have no account

--Oscar Wilde

_______________

Calendars allow us artificial caesuras from relentless time. Roman god Janus leant his name to our opening month, encouraging us to look both forward and back as we seek a path. We step out of routine and feel our commonality during the holidays, even if what we see we don't much like. We understand Eliot's Little Gidding: the beginning is often the end/And to make an end is to make a new beginning. Our lives become imbued with a certain drama, and tomorrow bears the stamp of new possibilities.

We feel the moment more urgently as things seem to speed up around the year's end. Yet every moment is already a perfect m
ise-en-scène. One needn't be so dramatic and fraught: Follow one breath, and you will see the perfection. Everything is right on time, even without your awareness.

But these arbitrary date stamps allow us the possibility of living an examined life, even if only for a moment, perhaps while inebriated and distracted by festivities. The new numbers on the new calendar say the slate is wiped clean, and the open boxes are ripe with potential.


What will you write there? Will it be a duplicate of the preceding year? Not to worry, for there is comfort in regularity. If your routine finds you fit and happy, continuity may serve you well.


If you have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, may the new boxes offer you new possibilities.
Happy 2010, everyone!

Labels:

4 Comments:

Blogger The Minstrel Boy said...

the hopi "long count" calendar is also changing, in near synchronization to the maya (which is no surprise, with the arrival of the spanish came a great fleeing north).

both of those calendars are attempts by the skywatchers to bring something as vast and incomprehensible as the universe down into terms that are understandable by us. they do not have an effect on the workings of that universe in the slightest. they are mere overlays to the workings of it.

happy new year to you all here.

(the arizona gaurd came home! sgt. major larry is now with his wife and beautiful daughters. they are going to be my guests for a few days in malibu before he gets right back to work planning the next, inevitable deployment.)

Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 12:01:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger Lisa said...

MB,

I did not know about the Hopi calendar -- so many ways of counting our days! And as you say, they are all artificial overlays, which do not impact anything in the least.

Malibu sounds fun -- I hope you all enjoy!

Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 1:31:00 PM GMT-5  
Anonymous g-dog said...

Hi Lisa. I'm curious about your point of view of this republican who is anti war:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBPPBKcre0Y

Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 4:12:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger Lisa said...

G-Dog,

Of course, everything Ron Paul says in this video is irrefutable. What is not purely documentable is what we would call, "common sense".

Then again, he is not really a Republican, far as they are defined today. Pity we don't have a parliamentary system which would support third parties, to which Ron Paul would belong.

Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 5:40:00 PM GMT-5  

Post a Comment

<< Home