The Last Day of 2023.

This will be a short post because I just wrote a long post on the winter solstice and other holiday celebrations. Josh actually wrote a blog post today. He has revived the blog he began eleven or twelve years ago, and I'm happy to see it. He wrote about the practice of imposing meaning. We had a discussion yesterday about what I called "planting seeds." We have different ideas about what that means. Take my annual tradition of selecting a very special calendar for the new year. I take this seriously; I am choosing the images that will light the next twelve months. This year, I have used an Annie Stegg calendar, which is beautiful. I have her Phantom of the Opera prints on our living room wall. Her art is enchanting. 

Anyway, back to planting seeds. Josh said that I choose a calendar because I am affirming (promising) that I will "be here" for the next year. I think he meant that as a choice to be alive for another year. But that's not how I think of it. I'm well past setting up future mile markers to pull myself through another day or week or month. Josh says that these deadlines or obligations are effective for him. But I buy the calendar because I want to send my future self beautiful art to reveal each month for the next year. I want to send reinforcements ahead, supporting myself in advance and giving myself something to which I can look forward. I've been thinking a lot about that, especially since the winter solstice. Celebrations and festivals plant seeds, events about which to get excited, events which will mark (and, as Josh wrote, giving meaning to) the passage of time. It's like leaving water at intervals in the desert for future travelers, and one of those travelers is you. 

I recently found a quotation I wrote down at some point. I don't remember the source or the exact words, but it was something like I stored up more love than I thought I could ever possibly need. I feel like I've done that over the last three years, and I think it is why I have survived this year. It has been a hard year. I've tried new things. I've had my heart broken more than once. I've grieved and not known how to grieve. I've not known how to move forward. But I've moved. And now, we're on the brink of 2024, and I continue to store up as much as I can, even if I'm only (or not even) breaking even right now. 

New Year's Eve may be an arbitrary marker, and if I stay up to see midnight, it won't be on purpose. I think Josh and I have stayed up for just a couple of our nineteen midnights. But I will gather any form of love and any form of joy I can find if it is healthy. I will set it out like water and store it up like blubber and furs.

So, I embrace the coming of the new year, and I ponder the word that I'll sling around my shoulders like a cape (and around Josh's shoulders, too, as we've decided to share a word) for the rest of the winter and whatever comes during this revolution. I'll write about it tomorrow.