Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon
Sunday gratefuls: the Dark. 2023. 2024. Years. Months. Days. Calendars. Mayan. Gregorian. Julian. Lunar. Jewish. Chinese. Rice cakes in Korea. Our need to carve up the invisible, time, into smaller and smaller bits. Nanoseconds. Then, for contrast: Eons. Epochs. Ages. Time obsession. Time zones. A 24 hour day. Standard time. Daylight Savings Time. Dawn. Dusk. Midday. The Noonday Devil. What if we just let it all be?
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Watches and Clocks
One brief shining: New Year’s eve that special time with the ball in New York City with that never empty shot glass at that dingy bar on some lonely street or with friends in silly hats and noise makers, boo 2023, 2024 making promises it cannot keep, protection from the ravages experienced at the hands of 2023 an Et tu Brutus of a year for sure with me here at home, listening to classical music, eating steak Diane, reading poetry.
2023. Let’s look back. Or, maybe not. Cheer up. Things could be worse. So I cheered up and sure enough 2024 came along with the most under anticipated, unwanted, yet most consequential election in our nation’s short history. Can you imagine the backrooms of the dark money folks getting ready to spend big on neuroscience approved ads? Or, the gleeful hackers in the crumbling 19th century mansion near some Russian backwater army post wringing their hands, ready to hit those keys and change American hearts and minds with lies and false facts. Perhaps you prefer to create a vision of young Chinese men and women fitted out with the latest and fastest in screaming cybermachines, driven by software and algorithms unthinkable only months ago. All of them aimed at your heart. Your mind. Our democracy.
Yes, our elections are not just for us to steal anymore. Sure, we’ve still got the operatives like Karl Rove or Lee Atwater or most damaging, the guy or woman you’ve never heard of who does things you’ll never hear about, quietly and with small knives. All that crashes toward us, but the storm surge, made outsized by those far away, now contains literally our worst enemies, too.
Oh, what fun it will be.
Anyhow let’s look backwards for a moment. Highlights of 2023. Colorado made psilocybin and other hallucinogens legal. Wolves got reintroduced here. Our Supreme Court and a district court both said out loud and officially that 45 fomented insurrection. And our Supreme Court banned him from the ballot because of it. Our snowpack was far above average. I went under three times and came out Israel. Mary made it back to Malaysia. Mark has found joy in teaching. Diane went to the Redwoods, Gold Rush country, and Taiwan. I went to Korea. My son and his wife moved to Songtan from Hawai’i. Murdoch, too. I saw that magnificent bull Elk in the rain. At night. Our economy avoided recession. A23a broke loose from its moorings and took off on an adventure. Earth herself ran a fever. A lot of people fell in love, got married, had babies. Did good deeds. Mitzvahs. Lived their ordinary lives in ordinary ways.
Final thought about 2023. All sacred.
