a quiet end

I’ve never invested much energy in thinking of New Year’s as starting over the way many people do, but this year is a little different. Not because of a renewed or altered perspective on the actual calendar date, but more because this year it seems to correspond with some massive, and overdue, shifts in life and its direction. Times lately have been uncertain and transitory, maybe even stretching back longer than I’d often like to acknowledge, but now everything is being transformed.

Much has already altered significantly over the last year; it’s sometimes hard to believe how many things have happened and how quickly it’s all gone by, but in almost every way transition and change have been the ruling forces in that time. Going forward, it is culmination. A synthesis of all of the lessons, movement, tragedy; shifts in character and moods; entrances and exits; all of the things that have run alongside my life in recent years.

These days my clothes are mostly broken zippers and patched holes. As the weeks tick by new ones form and are covered over, but mostly I’m okay with it. I’m not indifferent, I’d very much like to not have to get out the needle and thread so often, but if it’s a byproduct of the freedom to approach my life and dreams on my own terms, and an indication that the road traveled has led to them lifting off, I don’t mind. I even welcome it.

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What lies there? How many more wonderful and honest things are covered up by bombast and bravado worn like tired masks? Strapped to prettier faces lying beneath all of the words, ones both stolen and borrowed, in order to make them feel enormous. Truthfully, we are significantly more considerable underneath the projections, those that are less resolute and more fragile than anyone would care to believe. They are heavier, and we hang our heads forward in them, hiding the stronger thing behind a glassy and cracked porcelain veneer.

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Sometimes I find it difficult to work on things that have sort of passed me by emotionally. It’s not that the related feelings and events have become entirely outdated or irrelevant; no longer holding a place for me; but more that the immediacy of feeling from the particular moment in which they emerged isn’t quite as vital. I find retreading that mental space can be somewhat tricky. Often, it has to do with a sense that maybe I don’t understand whatever it is as well as I did at the time more than any sense of intimidation in revisiting old ideas and moldy feelings. With some things it’s negligible, barely even noticeable; but with others the path to re-entry into that particular world seems blocked. And so it sits.

There is another end to this, in that many things have a tendency to circle back around. What was once considered to be representative only of a past moment, finds itself even more illuminating in the future. It’s not entirely that events are cyclical - though at times they are and certain themes often reoccur - but artifacts sometimes have a way of resonating later on in a variety of ways. Most of the time they simply find themselves feeling fresh and interesting once again for whatever reason, but in some special cases, the newfound meaning transcends whatever the original intent may have been, augmenting its purpose and adding to its power.

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