There’s been a lag this year between the official threshold ritual and the actually lived experience of the settling of accounts, that balance sheet of mental assets and liabilities we call reflecting on our year. It’s a lag that pretty much describes the last three years, give or take. That’s the temporal metaphor I keep coming back to: a slippage out of sync, a running out of breath, the reel of events speedily unspooling while the laugh track awkwardly tries to catch up.
There’s a spatial metaphor I keep thinking about too. Transparencies of the self and world like many sheets of acetate in a pile, the projection fuzzy, going in and out of focus. I spent much of the last year shuffling the sheets around, expanding myself outward by reading more and joining more and paying more attention to the outermost contours of the figure on the screen. And it’s been good. But the picture is messy and hurts my head. That means it’s probably time again to slide the layers more neatly into the pile, turning faint outlines a deeper grey.
Because the nerves still need flossing and the myofascia still need tending to—in the belly of the beast, encircled by drums of war—yes—in the maw of history, mere blood and flesh.
We burned intentions on the last 12 days of the year. I think the ritual called for 13, but we timed it so that the last intention would be revealed on January 1st.
This is the first time we do this. I’m not sure how it went viral, but I saw many of you doing it too. When I thought about what mine would be, I had whatever manifestation’s equivalent to writer’s block is, so I decided to choose 12 areas of focus—family, health, organizing, God—to see which of these fate would put center-frame.
I laughed when I read mine when I woke up dehydrated at 5:00 am on New Year’s Day. It said “photography.”
I laughed because I’ve not been really feeling it lately. Mishaps and miscommunications took the joy out of it on occasions, but it’s more than that too: it’s a feeling of that high I chase maybe slipping away from me.
I’ve talked about this before: what I look for when taking pictures is less about what any of you see in them later. It’s nice when people appreciate the results, but that’s not what I enjoy most. I’m chasing the alignment of beheld and beholder. That click, that snap to grid, that transitory Yes beside the everlasting Why from “A Room with a View,” sealed with the shutter’s kiss. It’s addictive. Coming down from that isn’t easy.
So, I’m wondering what actually intending my intention might concretely mean this year. I’ll leave it at the wondering for now.
“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”
(‘Howards End,’ E. M. Forster)
I find it easier to be Helen than Margaret in this scene. Or, better: I’ve Helen’s head and Margaret’s heart.
Fragments imploring connection.
Loose leaves in the folio.