DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE - THE NEW YEAR

so this is the new year
and I don’t feel any different

the clanking of crystal
explosions off in the distance
in the distance…

so this is the new year
and I have no resolution

it’s self-assigned penance?
for problems with easy solutions

so everybody put your best suit or dress on
let’s make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
as thirty dialogues bleed into one
i wish the world was flat like the old days
so i could travel just by folding the map
no more airplanes or speed-trains or freeways
there’d be no distance that could hold us back

so this is the new year
so this is the new year
so this is the new year
so this is the new year

At the Entering of the New Year

        I (OLD STYLE)

Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
        On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
        ”Keep it up well, do they!”

The contrabasso’s measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
        The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
        Hailed by our sanguine sight.

        II (NEW STYLE)

We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;
But our truest heed is to words that steal
From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
And seems, so far as our sense can see,
To feature bereaved Humanity,
As it sighs to the imminent year its say:—

“O stay without, O stay without,
Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;
Though stars irradiate thee about
Thy entrance here is undesired.
Open the gate not, mystic one;
        Must we avow what we would close confine?
        With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,
Albeit the fault may not be thine.”

December 31. During the War.

— Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), English Poet

The Old Year

The Old Year’s gone away
    To nothingness and night:
We cannot find him all the day
    Nor hear him in the night:
He left no footstep, mark or place
    In either shade or sun:
The last year he’d a neighbour’s face,
    In this he’s known by none.

All nothing everywhere:
    Mists we on mornings see
Have more of substance when they’re here
    And more of form than he.
He was a friend by every fire,
    In every cot and hall–
A guest to every heart’s desire,
    And now he’s nought at all.

Old papers thrown away,
    Old garments cast aside,
The talk of yesterday,
    Are things identified;
But time once torn away
    No voices can recall:
The eve of New Year’s Day
    Left the Old Year lost to all.

  — John Clare (1793 - 1864), English Poet

Part of me really hates this time of year … oh, sure, I love it when winter is rolling in, when the snow is starting to fall, and ‘cross and/or ski seasons are in full swing.

Then there’s the holidays. The turning of a harvest celebration into football and overeating, followed by mad dashes to the malls the following day. The commercialization of what was supposed to be one of the greatest miracles in the history of mankind … Christmas music and decorations are starting to appear before Hallowe’en is over, and it just keeps rolling, rolling, rolling and doesn’t stop until January.

I know a lot of people would consider me to be a lost soul, either in the more figurative “you’re gonna burn in hell” sense, or in the more literal “you’re lost and confused” sense; one thing I do know, is that to me this time of year is when I try to get back in touch with the inner me.

Usually, I fail pretty miserably, since I tend to have an anxiety attack anytime anything takes me out of my comfort zones.

With all that has happened in the past year, however, I’m hoping that this next year I’ll be able to dig in a little deeper before retreating to safety, that I’ll be able to challenge my own preconceptions, and finally really be able to grow up and become the person that I’ve always wished I was.

I’ve floundered around for 40 years, and while in many ways I’ve made it work for me, I know there’s so much more out there if I can just get past my anxiety and just make steps in some direction, preferably the right direction, but anything is better than the stagnant, deep-rooted spot that I’m in now.

Yep … here it is, the day before Thanksgiving, and I’m already thinking about my New Years resolution. I’m just as roped in as everyone else.