Happy New Year and happy first Saturday of 2021 from the Wannaskan Almanac. Can I get a Woohoo!?
I get so nervous when I sit down to write. It’s easy for the anxiety to creep in. It lurks there, just below my good intentions. Before I know it, I've eaten all the injured gingerbread people who didn't survive the fall from the top of the refrigerator.
I have a quote by T.S. Eliot on a collage I made after the Kindergartener was born: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.”
New year, new words.
Last year’s word was schadenfreude as in #noschadenfreudein2020 “working to wish people well instead of delighting in their suffering" according to my journal entry from a year ago.
It was my hope to expand my heart with generosity and gratitude and to fly above the sea with wings of my own fashion like Daedalus. Not too high, or too low, but just right. Alas, I think I was more like the son, Icarus, than the father, melting my wings when aiming too high, then landing in the wetness – the waters of schadenfreude - where sometimes the water felt good and warm and I didn’t mind it at all. Oh, the shame. Oh, the humanity.
It is rare for me to go back and reread my journal entries, but I was curious to see what my thoughts were at the onset of 2020. Usually, I’m optimistic and cheerful; concerned about the state of the world, but always full of hope. Last year’s musings surprised me. “I’m not greeting 2020 with my usual sense of optimism. I feel instead – grim. Not fresh and renewed but in the midst of a journey already begun. Not starting, not ending. Just continuing. There’s no fanfare in that. Instead, slipping on my backpack and boots and continuing. I guess this is a different sense of resolution. Like "resolute." Determined and adamant but minus the ambition. More a steady plod. Grim eyes on a gray horizon, watching. Watching the world and its next move; light plans in case it all changes.”
And boy, did it ever.
My word for 2021 is “sky.”
Coming up with “sky” isn’t any great artistic feat on my part. Another writer shared a link to a resolution word generator. Feeling too exhausted (or lazy) to dream up my own word, I clicked and found appreciation in leaving it up to fate, randomness, and the amount of time it takes to take a screenshot to set my 2021 course.
Sky: “the area above the earth, in which clouds, the sun, etc. can be seen” (Cambridge)
So, with a new year, I fashion new wings, hopeful that this year I can be wise like the father, or, at the very least, gain a little altitude with the lift of some more life experience.
On my New Year's Day walk, with my new word on my mind, I kept my eyes up, up to the sky above the treeline. The first thought I had was “breathe.” This may have been influenced by the fact that I had just listened to the song Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick.A theme song for 2021 isn’t a bad idea. After some lyric searching, I discovered lots of “Breathe” songs and I think I’m going to go with this sweet, pop tune by Mackenzie Ziegler. Bonus: the video is filled with skies.
The bottle of my brain uncorked, more words tumbled through my conscience while I walked and the sky moved through shades of soft cashmere gray, to pewter gray, to lead gray to the gray-black of night.
Open spaces, wide arms, air, forgiveness, freedom. Forgiveness as the expansion of freedom. Movement. Yes.
I have journaled about this feeling of movement for years. Especially forward movement – a moving towards something. Action. Engagement of a soul’s purpose.
Sky provides ample space for movement. Sky holds space for true self. Sky offers plenty of room for all and for the bigness of the hope I feel in my heart.
And maybe I’m on to something here because when I opened the Rejoice O’ Earth calendar given out by my parish, all but one photo featured some element of sky – be it a vast horizon or a small window of blue through leaves or rocks.
Maybe I’ll make a sky collage today.
Wishing you all the best in 2021.
On This Day
Remembering You
Kim
Love the Eliot quote! Great guidance, esp. for 2021. I think the quote speaks to every word we writers put to the page. The creative act often requires letting go of the past words just written, not stressing about the future words, and letting the present moment's words take the floor.
ReplyDeleteYour sky motif brings up bitter-sweet memories of flying with my Dad years and years ago (still brilliant and poignant), An Icarus story to be sure. Both of us flew/fly toward the sun in different ways - complementary and quietly intimate. We understood each other.