Grind

Dec 28 2015

After Christmas, before the new year

you try to imagine beginnings

in winter's deepest dark.

Even harder

in this week of expectation

and excess.

Glutted with food, and too much drink,

the tree shedding needles

like a dog in spring.

The house over-heated

kids, home-free,

bills deferred

and icy streets,

the sneeze that turns to a cold.

The old year's over

the calendar decrees,

but who could really tell?

Looking out

at the same grey sky

piles of soiled snow.

And looking down

at your salt-stained boots

in a pool of murky melt,

the mildewed smell

of that winter coat

you no longer even notice.

Waiting

for the empty gifts to be shelved

the first resolution broken.

For the contrived gaiety

of the big night,

the morning after

bleary-eyed.

For the calendar to flip

         and school to be in

                         and work to begin again.

Time moves like a straight arrow

inexhaustibly on.

While life resumes

in its circular motion

over and over and over;

a wheel made of heavy stone

that turns with crushing force.

None of this applies to me: I don't do Christmas (no tree, no kids no bills), and mostly ignore New Year's celebrations. And I don't feel nearly as dark and cynical as the poem. (Could anyone?!!) But there is something about the actual lack of light. And I have enough imagination to feel what many others are probably feeling.

It also strikes me as an odd time of year to turn over the calendar, when there is nothing to differentiate the 31st from the 1st, and when the darkness and dullness pretty much blur one week into the next. Wouldn't it be far more appropriate to designate the start of the year to some date that actually seems like a beginning, that seems to make a break from what came before? ( ...Early September, perhaps: when school begins, and summer effectively ends (at least for us).)

It's also an odd week, with the feeling of time out of time: when some people are working, a lot not; when school's out and the days are short and the weather can keep us housebound -- not enough to do, and on each other's nerves. And a week of over-indulgence -- that might feel good in the moment, but inevitably leaves you feeling worse.

Time is an unforgiving taskmaster, moving in a straight line and over-taking us. While our lives, despite their predictable trajectory, are essentially cyclic: our daily habits and routines; the recurring seasons. And nothing reminds us more of this than the ritual turning of one year into the next. Here, the cyclic nature of life turns into a wheel, which turns into stone, which turns to a heavy millstone, grinding us under.