Revolve, Again
(resolved)
I’m sitting here watching the morning light, listening to the breathing of the dog, a cup of hot, strong coffee next to me, always and forever a cup of hot, strong coffee.
I’m thinking about the end of one year and the beginning of another arbitrary line if there ever was one, but one that has stuck for centuries and comes with it the most superstitious of rituals. Thinking about past writing and future writing. Thinking, Janus-like behind and ahead. I share this, a past post, which could have well been written today (and is being rewritten as you read, practically), a clear indicator of the eddies I’ve been circling within. I edit, add, and subtract. The piece isn’t old and isn’t new; it’s a merger, and it rhymes year after year, but so does life, I suppose. I suppose we circle round the drain of ourselves until we get caught in the stopper, or make it out to sea.
Definition of REVOLUTION
1
a (1) : the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course; also : apparent movement of such a body round the earth (2) : the time taken by a celestial body to make a complete round in its orbit
2
a : a sudden, radical, or complete change
b : a fundamental change in political organization; especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed
c : activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation
d : a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm
I wrote all this last year and the year before that, and I’m a little wobbly from the truth I see in it for me now, today. I could probably write this same post all over again, and will. And I am. I’m usually interested in definitions 1, definition 2 a and 2d. But this year, I’m also worried about 2b and 2c.
a (1) : the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course; also : apparent movement of such a body round the earth (2) : the time taken by a celestial body to make a complete round in its orbit
Definition 1 is, of course, the New Year itself. Hooray! Another one! We did it, or the earth did, with us along for the ride. Some of us happy, some terrified, some, broken, some rebuilt. The earth has made its journey round the sun, round the system, round and round and round.
Definition 2a : a sudden, radical, or complete change
“I resolve to let things make sense.” I said this last year.
But they don’t make sense, not always. Quite a lot has happened this year that does not make sense to me at all. Like, a whole fuck-ton of a lot, and quickly. Between job changes, my husband’s cancer, opening a business, and making the most unusual friend I can imagine having, I feel like I’ve lost my bearings a little, both in good and bad ways. Mostly good? Which is weird because the fuck-ton of lots of sudden nonsense changes aren’t necessarily good? But I feel oddly centered about them, about who I am within them. Inexplicable.
Turning around to face the past year, I do know this: risk is vital, and life is random and capricious. Deaths of all kinds, physical and meta, occur without much notice. Using your precious time preparing for the moment when you’ll be who you are enough to do the things you want is a risk, but not the one that will help you. Negotiating with demons such as After-I-Lose-Weight or Once-I-Save-The-Money and so forth in order to be who you already are, and you DO know who that is, is a kind of dying while living.
Risking leaping while learning, just letting yourself take the damn lead, that’s the trick of it. Even if it is terrifying, it’s aliveness.
Definition 2d : a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm
“I resolve to be who I am.” I say this this year, for I always was this person, and why not keep being her, because she’s great and lovely and deserves to keep being been.
There was a challenge in trying to know who this person I said I’d be ok with being actually was. There was most certainly waiting. There has been waiting. A lot of “dying” of parts of me. But this last year? Things woke up a bit, lived a bit. This was new.
Sometimes waiting is the thing that you have to do in order not to wait. Waiting as an action? I don’t know; it feels like one of those paradoxes.
Sometimes there is a desert, and you sit in that desert because that’s where the work has to happen, even if it doesn’t feel like work. Sometimes, things take a lot of time to process, to grow, and to emerge from where they’ve been hidden.
“I resolve to live without waiting.” I say this to myself right now.
There is no glory in waiting, no nobility in waiting to live until later, until tomorrow, or until the time is right. My mother, who waited and waited and waited while she was alive, waited for something that I still don’t quite understand, always put off who she had been, could have been again, and simply waited. After her illness, Alzheimer’s, took her, I waited alongside her, glimpsing parts of me I should have been being, if not for waiting, waiting until she passed. And then? Get to be me without fear of loss and reprisal, finally? Have less on my plate? Wait for permission? Wait to be loved? Just wound up behind where I could have been? Perhaps, perhaps, it was all a process to get where I am today.
The year itself ends, a symbol of passage both of time but also life. A year dies, a year is born, and we mark the end with lists and the beginnings with resolutions; perhaps it is all the same thing swirled in and out of itself. All I know, facing this transition, is that holding back the self, the call, whether through waiting, hiding, not risking, or being one way at work or another outside of it, serves no one, certainly not you.
Certainly not me
I am often embarrassed and frightened by my desires, the deepest ones as if to admit the want is a weakness. Or worse, admitting them is opening the gate to let out a hungry animal, which will then leap out of me and consume me. I know that seems dramatic, but it feels like that sometimes.
These desires are the transformative/transcendent experiences, the peak moments. Sex, food, grief, writing, theater, dance, music, magic, deep community, religion. All are the same feeling, on my own or in groups; I realize it’s a room of mirrors, all of it the same dynamic and the same feeling inside of myself.
I’m thinking about how I’ve lived. And I have lived a life where I measure out those moments, those transformative ones, and try to control them, or I leap a little too far in and feel overwhelmed afterward, or I deny them, totally choking off the power that is right there and poking at me and wanting out to run alongside me. There is a lot of shadow territory there.
b : a fundamental change in political organization; especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed
c : activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation
“I resolve to own my desires and my calling. I resolve to fight.” I say this for the years to come.
It feels like revolutionary times right now, at least it does to me.
We are all feeling it, I think; this pull towards realness and real systemic change is happening hard right now, and frankly, it will take all of us to pull this revolution off (in the face of an anti-revolution that’s been sprung, a re-revolution of people accepting the deepest truths about ourselves personally and culturally, light and dark in order to break through this fever dream of authoritarianism, fear, and unbridled greed. It will entail not hiding desires in boxes, not measuring them out with fear and a leash, but letting them run alongside, often leading the way of revolution, towards love, rage, and hope combined.
Written five years ago, it feels even more real now. I had no idea what I was facing then, maybe none of us did. And look at us all now. Here we are again, revolving and rhyming and dealing with such a time as this.
“I resolve to revisit.” I say to the past and current and future.
At least, that’s how it feels today, on this last day of so many yesterdays and years coming soon again and again and again.