In the Here. And Now.

These are not New Year's resolutions. Personally, I think new year's resolutions are silly and one dimensional and I'm simultaneously amused and aggravated by the need for a new year to come so that change can be spurred.


However, I'm not completely closed off to the infectious reborn spirit that tingles the air.

The past few weeks have been...tumultuous. I have sunk from one low to the next and have wrote such depressing posts that they are fit only to be unpublished and I hope they never surface and see the light of day. I think that was really important though. I surrounded myself with every single thing, thought, notion and aspect that would overwhelm me in mourning and grief. Music, places, feelings, thoughts, artifacts, plans, pro-con lists. I spread it all around me and devoured every last one.

There are two points in a mourning period. One, in which your grief overwhelms you; the more you think about lifting your head, the farther it drops. You want to grieve, you want to be depressed. And the other is when you completely shake off this feeling - not only of the grief, but also of that feeling of wanting to drown in its swell. People say that this is when you get over it. But that's not true. This point is when you meet the grief head to head. When you've sunk so low that you can finally meet that grief and come to terms with it.

In a manner of speaking, I was grieving. I was grieving for a good many things, good people. The loss seems like a death of sorts - death of a love, death of a dream - and the unknowing: not knowing, as I stand at this crossroads, which path I should take, how much I trust myself, where to turn and whom to turn to. How to pick what it is I want to do, or change or be when there's just so much to do and change and be.


I have finally reached a point in which I no longer want to grieve. I no longer want to sink and wallow and tread. I am still in the process of discussion with that grief; we're still setting out the terms. But there are certain things that we - I - have absolutely established beyond a modicum of doubt.


Firstly, what is past...truly is past. It is gone. It is neither touchable through memory nor through time. It is gone. What could have been will always be rosier than what is now. That is a given. Secondly, from what is gone, something can always be rebuilt. I think of this like the rebirth of a phoenix or the remains of a hurricane. A phoenix dies by erupting into flame and as a piece of matter that once was, it leaves behind other matter - ashes. The death is heartbreaking but it is organic. Because there is always matter left in the wake of the destruction with which to rebuild oneself, to be reborn. The baby phoenix rises from the ashes. A hurricane ravages and eats and completely consumes people's homes, their livelihoods and any ounce of sense they have been able to understand. But once it quietens down, the remains of wood and debris, of cables and clothes, are the symbols of destruction with which people's lives are rebuilt.


Matter begets matter. One is never left with absolutely nothing. One is never washed ashore with nothing. In the chasm between what once was and what is now, there is a vaccum for the birth of what will be.

I'm not yet sure what it will be. But I think that I've been putting way too much emphasis on what it should be and setting myself up for disappointment. There is nothing exploratory in an absolute projection of a future. Telling myself, internalizing, that things will be this way and that, that I will be this way and that, is silly. It makes no sense. I'm not getting out there and doing it, fulfilling it - whatever it may be. Instead, I'm moping that it's not happening and I'm not there. But I didn't know where exactly I wanted to be.

I'm going to go really slow. Intrinsically, that is very hard for me - in fact, is goes against the very definition of me. I'm impulsive and emotional and heady (Aries, after all :D). I jump from one thing to the next. But I'm really going to take the time to take it all in. I'm not going to ride the constant adrenaline wave because, really, I can't anymore. I've lost all sense of direction and I need to regain it. Well, I need to gain it because who knows if I had it to begin with. Everything seems illusatory and dream-like these days.

Anyhow, these are some things that I have carefully thought in what seems like my time in exile. Not hasty, impulsive decisions, but real, actual actions.

I'm going to volunteer. One of my problems these past few months have been that I've been completely overwhelmed. I'm absolutely, mentally swamped with everything - the state of the world. There are just so many causes to take up, so many ways in which to advocate those causes and yet still many more places in which they plague. There's injustice everywhere. How do you tackle it all at once? How do you save the world from it's own catatonic self?

I'm going to write a letter to him. It will not be a silent one. It will not be a disasterous one like the rory-writes-dean-a-letter-and-he-gets-thrown-out. It will be an apology letter. It will be a letter not because I have no courage to face him but because somethings are better said in print. With such fragile memories as people have come to have (slight sarcastic undertone), a letter would seem to have greater longevity. And brevity. The boy I knew is done and gone now and there is nothing so relieving as that lingering note of finality. He is - in a manner of speaking - dead and this new person is a stranger to me. I have no intention that our lives should ever cross again but if it does, I want there to be no bitterness.

I'm going to take dl.

I'm going to create. I'm going to give life to all those ideas. I'm not going to leave them half-baked. I really do think creation is complete immortality and beauty intertwined and forgive me for my follies/vices but I do want to be part of such a beguiling thing.

I'm going to see the city.

I'm going to learn one new thing every single day. No matter its triviality.

I'm going to be wrapped up like this - cautious and deliberate - for a while, until I figure everything out. Most importantly, I'm going to be in the here and the now, Now.