Moment on a Bucket

Well good morning, psychology of the New Year. Today is clear and cold, and I am looking out over the mountain just beyond my porch, trying to remember Jan 1 2014. I don’t remember. Wait, I think I do. But now that I have, I don’t think I want to. I’d rather try to remember back to the first cold day I stared out this same patio door, at these mountains in the morning. I would have been brand new that day, in an eerie way, having just moved into this house, having just left a whole world behind (not fast enough). It was not a year ago, but it’s close, and the mindset of people celebrating New Years day the world over has me looking back, trying to figure out if that other world is far enough way from me now. I decide it looks like a distant star, but still in the same galaxy. Old, dead light, still in sight. Might be as good as it gets. A faint glittering. A myth of wishes.

All the wonderings I’ve managed at this very window since then are sort of flashing in and out of my mind’s eye. The babysitter, who stayed over last night, is fast asleep on the couch (my morning thinking spot), so I am sitting on a bucket of pastry flour with coffee, behind a potted Yuzu tree. I feel slightly ridiculous, like I’m squatting in my own house. But then, I’ve felt that way all year, so this is perfect. There is nothing wrong with looking around at your life, and finding yourself a bit of a foreigner there. It’s actually quite amusing, and frank, and fine.

No resolutions. I’ve a bit of a habit of resolving to do many things as I go along in this life. If there is any resolution this morning, it looks more like an instinct to do less. No, that’s not what I meant. Expect less? No, no. Ease up. That’s it. Get your head around the genuine decision, and the knowing that resolution and focus are always fleeting. Things are still moving under the glass, no matter how objective we get. I like it, alive this way. Today’s just another day, the first day of something else. Yep. All the blasé New Years scrooges, and all the hopefuls who slept in workout clothes: we’re all right. All of us, and we all like it this way. We like that new beginnings don’t always come where we expect them.

Just like two nights ago, when I had a new beginning of sorts. A start, for sure, in many senses. And a reminder. Same difference, really. Anyway, I found myself inside of incredible warmth that I had forgotten, comfort that for some time has only existed in my mind, and I’ve been looking for its fingerprints for a while. I tried to figure out exactly what was this feeling, and why I could not sleep, and what was happening to me. It took me close to a full day to realize that it was a rare feeling of exact resolution. I almost could not believe it, the feeling, and my own body, and the generous fact of being alive. It felt like an offering. Unbelievable. Now, I’m on this bucket, feeling like a lucky stranger on the first day of the year, and I’m just hoping I recorded enough of that resolution to last. Or to be completely honest, maybe I’m sitting here sheepishly wishing for more of it. Or maybe I’m sitting here, secretly knowing that real life just got out of focus for a long and desperate stretch. That would make this a hell of a moment on a bucket, where real life is, at long last, just what I thought it was the whole time.

So. Hurrah. Here. Happy start. You’ve spent a year now stumbling around, looking for proof of all the things you already know. Here, now, child. You’re welcome.