DAYS GO BY

the empty chair

These pictures are from the year 2010, yesterday. The snow melted in the night and this morning the air is fog, the ground mushy mud, a little bit of wind, enough to keep the wind chimes tinkling and sometimes a rush of chimes. Overnight, the weather changed from a month of bitter cold and ice to 48 degrees now and infrequent tiny patches of snow. A radical weather change with the new year. I won't try to think of that as a sign or anything like that. It could be, but I don't get it. It's a welcome coincidence. I have seen, however, that what we call coincidence tends to be a divine moment of connect with one's flow. It is what it is.

Everything is what it is and it's illusion for me to ever think I have any control over anything but myself, and not much there. I have a little bit of self control, but none to brag about. I'm able to stop myself from jumping into a gun fight or saying something disrespectful to Anderson Silva about his mutha. Anybody can do that, so it's not saying something special. That's kind of kindergarten self-control. Doubt I'm far past the 4th grade, if that far along. Not interested in resolutions for the new year, because whatever they are, they're not even remembered by the end of the year, or end of the month. And I'm not sure Jan 1 is anything but a calendar first day. It seems more like March 21 is the solar first day. There is certainly a reason Jan 1 is the chosen date. It's probably something I "learned" in school and it's gone. It has the familiarity of something maybe read about in the distant past with no recollection of what it was. Might google it later if it continues a concern. Doubt it will.

At this time, I don't feel like a review of last year matters in any way. The future, including the rest of this day, is opaque but for mental projections along the transition from Aldous Huxley's vision of the future to George Orwell's, according to momentum. I prefer to look at it as everyday life at home in the world of people I feel close with, not think beyond what is going on immediately in my world, in here, with minimum regard for forces out there. I can't quite do that because the spread of mega-corporate discount stores has shut down the town that is in my community, Sparta, and has already shut Whitehead down and out. Those big forces "out there" reach "in here." I can't change them, but like to be aware of them. Thirty years ago our corporate oligarchy froze wages for working people by now unable to keep up with inflation. In my community, people make the same income they made 30 years ago, and grocery, etc, prices have tripled. Next will be quadrupled, not far away. For the last 30 years there has been only the most minimal maintenance on the Parkway due to cuts in budget to fund the military so much it was an embarrassment for them. Now with "stimulus" money they're shutting down our section of the Parkway a few years for maintenance, money borrowed from China.

I feel more like today, Jan 1, is just another day. Waking this morning, it was the morning after last night, like all other mornings follow the night before. This morning was so foggy it looked like snow on first looking out the window. The snow and ice is soaking into the ground to raise the water table a bit. I'd say my last year was a very good year, and felt like it was a good year for the people in my world. We've been happy, or so it seems. I feel like the next cycle of a year will be another good year with good friends. I don't quite know what I mean by a "good" year, unless getting through it is a good thing. In the course of a year not everything is sweetness and light. It is possible that a single event can make an entire year a sorrow, and the other way too, that one event can make a year of joy. Either way, that's just part of it. For the most part, it's sorrows and joys hand-in-hand. 2011 is the year before 2012, the year at the end of the Mayan calendar. I can't help but think that what follows every Dec 31 is Jan 1. The last day or year of a cycle is the one before the first again, no seam. Like the sun coming up.

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