Newness

Everybody loves it. There is a certain charm, excitement, mystery about the new: an irreplaceable opportunity to wash over past transgressions and start again like babies.

A new day: today I'll start running, stop smoking, remember to pray, forget to be miserable.

A new relationship: this time I'll assert myself, live in the moment, be playful, not do anything psychotic.

A new car: I'll keep it clean, offer to carpool, get regular oil changes, name it something other than Betsie.

A new diary: keep it current, draw pictures in the margin, save it for my kids, hide it from my partner.

A new garden: plant early, remember to compost, don't slaughter slugs, water every day.

A new home: put my clothes away all the time, do the dishes every day, leave no opportunity for dust bunnies to stage a coupe d'etate, relax in it.

A new moment: react gently, notice beauty, breathe first, stop counting backwards.

A new year: resolve to ________, make plans but not plan the outcome, aim for progress not perfection, stop making resolutions.

We mean well, I know.

I have a personal fetish for new paper: crisp, clean, flat, smooth, enticing -- waiting, beckoning for words, pictures, scribbles of brilliance. Stationary bliss.

I love new books: smell of ink, flawless pages, shiny covers -- standing tall and proud on the shelf or table, begging for someone to suck up their message. Literary opium.

I feel excited about new spaces: hidden alcoves, closests full of other people's secrets, walls screaming for colour -- begging for someone to brush and stroke their idiocyncracies all over smooth, inviting surfaces. Structural ecstasy.

We live for fresh new moments, second chances, opportunities to forget. There is nothing wrong with the old; that is where the magical place between knowledge and wisdom resides. Drawing from that which was, if we're smart, we bound like puppies into the new, full of anxiety and optimism. It's challenging. And delightful. And scary. And unavoidable. And delicious. And unworthy of human-made, egocentric adjectives designed explicitely for asserting our superiority over the omnipotent complexity of symbolism.

But anyway.

Happy New.