Shining Brightly

It is with big expectant eyes and a smile as wide as my heart is full that I ring in each new year. From some secret repository of excitement hidden in the depths of this tiny body, volumes of joyous noise and enthusiastic whooping come flooding through me at the turn of the year. I imagine my enthusiasm dazzling across sound waves, propelled by the kinetic energy of the party, with the collective vibrancy of new year's attire; every utterance shimmers like a sequined dress, every gesture and dance move have a metallic pizzaz, and that midnight kiss is as sharp and sexy as a good suit and tie. Everything that happens in the moments after counting down has the distinct feeling of being new.

Isn't that the best feeling? A year's worth of burdens and baggage totally melted away at the drop of a ball. I allow the butterflies, the flurry, the elation, the hysteria to completely overcome me. Abandoning all sense of time and duty, I allow the evening to sweep me up in bubbly drinks and dancing, in hugging and laughing, in the concentrated brightness of a New Year's Eve crowd.

It is only in the waking hours of the first day of a new year, once the champagne buzz has subsided and the sixteenth hour of sleep has passed, that the happy butterfly feeling sinks right to the pit of my stomach and the fluttering gets a little frantic. It isn't enough to simply celebrate a new year, you have to do something with it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not one of those people who finds resolutions to be frivolous or contrived. I like having benchmarks, ways of measuring the prosperity of a year. But I find that as I get older it gets harder and harder to draft a meaningful and attainable set of blueprints to guide me through the next 365 days. It takes days of careful pondering, of combing music, literature, even fashion, for threads of inspiration. I used to feel an ugency to amalgamate all those notions as quickly as possible in order to purposefully move forward in the year. Now, I think I like to ruminate over what it is that inspires me before I attempt to extract a significance of my own. And of course, when that moment of illumination strikes and it appears as though I know exactly what it is I need and want from the coming months, my writer's spirit goes in to a frenzy.

Penning my resolutions is a solemn ritual; it requires silence, space to think, a determined mind. So it goes now as I say, welcome, welcome, welcome to a new and promising 2011.

1. On New Year's Eve day I began reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes. From his favorite novel he cut words and sentences out of each page, essentially creating this beautiful three dimensioanl puzzle of words and a new story that is extremely stark, but wildly descriptive through truncated thoughts. It wasn't until now that I fully recognized the symbolism in my choosing to sit with this novel on NYE. Not only did Foer take something old and well loved and make it personal and new, he let it speak through simplicity. One particular passage, the one bearing the titular namesake, struck me as an exquisite articulation of what it means to embrace the passage of time: "Exhausted by passivity, the poses and postures, the shifting weight from foot to foot, we find ourselves part of the tree of codes. Reality is as thin as paper. Only the small section before us is able to endure, behind us sawdust in an enormous empty theatre."

I have always been one to grip so tightly to the past that the future sometimes feels like a powerful current or undertow, lapping at my belly, threatening to rip away my grasp from what is known and concrete. Always shifting my weight to accomodate for the small shreds of change that I allow to eek past that guarded wall of routine. As I watch things change and grow around me, I'm beginning to realize that reality isn't this steadfast, reliable account of past experiences. No matter how cummulative knowledge and emotion and maturity may be, life is as delicate and viscous as muslin cloth. I think I'm ready to allow some of that fragile webbing to dissolve, I'm not afraid to stand in an empty room of the past.

2. I'm willing to clean out the closets of my mind, I should probably undergo a tangible purge as well. I spin sentimentality like spider's silk, enrobing ridiculously meaningless artifacts in artificial significance. This year, I will make a concerted effort to distinguish trash from trinket. As much as I love being surrounded by the familiarity of my belongings, I have a growing disdain for this culture of stuff we've become inured to. There are too many people in the world, and we are producing heap after unsustainable heap of crap because we have nothing better to do with our wealth. Thankfully, I'm attracted to things with history, things that are well lived in and well used. Still, I think I'm ready to commit to an "out with the old in with the new" modus operandi. I'm excited to eliminate some clutter and welcome a new family of possessions in to my life.

3. I want to document my life more thoroughly. For anyone who has clicked through the masses of photographs on my Facebook page, you may be scratching your dumbfounded head at this statement, but it's true. I've allowed my little photographic obsession to supplement the lack of a written account. I've carried the same pocket-sized Moleskin notebook around in my purse for the last two years, and all I have to show for it is a smattering of ruffled pages containing grocery lists. I want to make it a point to cultivate mindfulness by taking more notes. I don't make time for copying down a poignant passage, let alone a page number, I forget my thought when I think of the perfect way to describe something, I find myself in a funny or unusual circumstance whose memory is clouded over time. The more I take note of these things, the more easily instigated to write I'll become, I'm sure of that.

4. The act of walking, of taking a walk, holds a lot of meaning with me. As a child, Mother and I took daily walks. It was our time to talk and reflect, to laugh and observe, to smile at neighbors and collect things in our pockets. I loved Fall walks when there were acorns on the ground, and taking a walk on my birthday, the day after Independence Day, when a colorful littering of used fireworks blew down the sidewalks. As a teenager I walked Bardstown Road with friends almost daily; those walks signified the evolution of my independence, the mischief and harmless immaturity of my youth. Even in my early(er) years of adulthood I chose walking to the bank or the drugstore from my apartment over driving. Somewhere in these recently busy years between balancing school and work, I lost the motivation to hoof it. Looking back, I think there's a lot to be said for the time walking allows to take pause, to observe, to work off bad energy, to organize one's thoughts. I foresee two busy little feet and a clear conscience in my future.

5. The previous point may very well facilitate the one I am about to make- In the spirit of cleaning out clutter, eliminating unnecesary weight, and taking strides for a clearer, more productive mind, I need to invent more beneficial ways of processing and releasing negativity. As I admited in last year's resolutions, the gift of sharp wit and sarcasm might as well be the very strands of my DNA. We, the Moores and the Reads, are appreciaters and propagators of quick, dark humor. The other day when Daddy said he's afraid that a swift gust of wind would cause Angelina Jolie's lips to smack her in the face I nearly fell off my chair laughing at that image. However, when he makes similar jokes about people in our immediate environment, I can see a tiresome pattern of negativity for negativity's sake emerging. Learning to decipher a good laugh from an unwarrented jab is a personal hurdle that I've improved on, but have yet to overcome.

Further, I have a hard time letting go of a bad day or a series of inconvenience. I allow myself to rant, to complain, and sometimes to wallow. It would make my soul much lighter to find a means of shedding ill-feelings without speaking and acting them in to existence. Harnessing patience is a good first step, pulling myself back to consider what is worth attending to and what is easily ignored. Breathing, clearing my mind, unbusying myself- these are the acts I need to more frequently engage in. Or better yet, using my intuition and focusing on the humor in a trying situation.. Dont be so serious.

6. Find the perfect pair of red boots, and wear the living daylights out of them.