Showing posts with label New Year's Resolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Year's Resolution. Show all posts

Friday, January 2, 2015

January 2: New Year's Resolution, Kim Addonizio, "New Year's Day"

My sister is still at the hospital as far as I know.  It is 10 p.m.  This night has been fairly quiet.  A good time to reflect on...life.  The start of a new year always makes me a little melancholy.  It has a lot to do with things that I haven't accomplished, things that I wish to accomplish, and the wide chasm in between.

I didn't really make any New Year's resolutions.  I made a New Year's plan.  I am going to seriously work on a book that's been brewing in my head for several years.  I'm going to consciously carve out time every day to write.  I mean, besides my blog posts.

So I'm not going to get all depressing and dark.  I'm going to leave that up to Kim Addonizio tonight.

Saint Marty knows 2015 is going to be a better year.

New Year's Day

by:  Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls 
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell   
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.   
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only   
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never   
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against   
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,   
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know   
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound   
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.   
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want   
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   
and lift my face to it.
I'm dreaming...

Saturday, January 7, 2012

January 7: Ghost of the Future, Resolutions, New Cartoon

"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any Spectre I have seen."

Of all the ghosts Scrooge encounters, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come terrifies him the most.  The future is scary.  For Scrooge, it contains loneliness, disappointment, and death at this point in the novel.  Of course, Scrooge is given a gift that most of us will never receive:  a vision of what his future holds.  Sort of like George Bailey and Clarence, old Ebenezer is taught a lesson by the ghost.

I spend a good portion of my time worrying about the future.  When I had my Ebenezer moment yesterday afternoon, I was gazing into the future and seeing poverty and bankruptcy and foreclosure.  It was a ridiculous thing to do.  I have no idea what the future will bring me.  For all I know, I may publish my book of poems (you know, the one that didn't win the Phil Levine Poetry Prize) and be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.  Then, the university will offer me an instant tenured professorship along with an office suite and my choice of classes to teach.  It could happen.

My point is that the future can be frightening (all graves and darkness), or it can be wonderful (all Pulitzers and sun).  Or it can fall anywhere in between those extremes, and usually does.  I will never be given a vision of the Yet to Come, like Scrooge.  I will never be allowed to see what life would have been like if I'd never been born, ala George Bailey.  I just have to trust that things will work out well.

That's the plight of all Christians.  It's called faith.  We can do everything to insure success.  Good school.  Good job.  Hard work.  Long hours.  New Year's resolutions.  There are no guarantees.  The only guarantee we have as Christians is that God/Jesus will be us, through fire and rain, summer and winter.

Saint Marty still has a lot of work to do, faith-wise.

Confessions of Saint Marty