Year’s end,
all corners
of this floating world, swept.
— Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), “Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter.” Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
Notes:
Take a breath…
Don’t swallow the sun
The moon isn’t bright enough…
I promise I’ll be a better person this time next year.
If you’re reading this…
Congratulations, you’re alive.
If that’s not something to smile about, then I don’t know what is.
― Chad Sugg, from “Swallow the Sun” in Monsters Under Your Head
Notes:
Today I want
to resolve nothing.
I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold…
– Kim Addonizio, from “New Year’s Day” in Tell Me
Notes:
I had gone back again to my little house and stood up on its roof and wanted to see a good end in all that and to find a good beginning in myself. And now, let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to his wife in The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: 1892-1910
Notes: Quote – Anne Sexton Appreciation. Photo: DistantPassion
letters swallow themselves in seconds.
notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
so much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
i begin again with the smallest numbers.
quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things i didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under Words: Selected Poems
Notes:
letters swallow themselves in seconds.
notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
so much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
i begin again with the smallest numbers.
quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things i didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under Words: Selected Poems
Notes:
For the New Year—I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favorite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself today, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:—I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, January of 1882, Sanctus Januarius in The Gay Science
Credits: Quote Source: Brainpickings. Portrait (modified): izquotes.com
Hmmmmmm.
I might add the following to the y-axis criteria:
+ Tolerance level/distance in commuting to a New Year’s Eve party (and finding a ride back)
+ Interest in shelling out piles of cash for the inflated cost of cover charge, dinner and cocktails
+ Excitement of socializing with 1,000s of your closest friends and talking about it the next day
+ Ability to stay up to/beyond midnight (which is beyond your 10pm shot clock)
+ Recovery period for digesting vast amounts of food and alcohol
+ Enjoyment of watching the ball drop in Times Square live (vs. from your couch on TV)
Credits:
Live & Learn 