Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Dirge to the Year

I emulate the inimitable Shakespeare and appropriate his lines to suit my own ends.The evil that years do lives after them. Sometimes in the form of wrinkles and marriage proposals. The good is oft interred with their obsolete calenders. Those of you who still follow this blog are probably wondering (or shrugging sarcastically) at the tardiness of this post. Stay your chiding for the moment while I mourn the passing of a dead year. A year that didn't get its due.

It took me 21 days, 2 hrs and 25 minutes to collect myself enough to attempt a eulogy for a human year. Yes, a year so very human. She (yes, she ) came rushing into the world on a crisp mid-winter spring day with bright eyes that painted the world in vibrant tones of red, gold and green. Travel plans, multiple reunions, large garrulous weddings: Life, life and more seam-bursting life. Her loquacious toddlerhood melts into a mellow maturity too old for its age. From the shrill coos of the first months she settles into the slow steady cadence of little children speaking big words. The baby year was beginning to realise that she had a deadline, that she had to make it count. And so she makes the transition without losing her cheer. She keeps her lengthy conversations so as to not worry you with her deeper silences and quieter excesses.The young child-woman who you care for gingerly wraps her adolescent arms around you feeling for your empty spaces and slipping into adulthood. Caught in the cusp of her loving and loved embrace you close your eyes and think 'forever'.

And then, suddenly, the shadows fall longer on the sundial. I look for the young year that had thrown her arms around me and find her shriveled and pale in my arms. She did not have the time to grow old. Youth sublimated into age leaving behind a fragile form of spun crystal. Yet, her delicacy carries the weight of  lost causes, broken promises, the smiles you missed and the tries that failed.

It took me 21 days, 2hrs and 51 minutes to get here. It took a stroke of midnight for her to turn into an obsolete number. The dinning rage of the outraged mortals merged with the gong of the midnight hour shattering her glass body.I scatter the atom dust of her broken hourglass form to the winds that clamor with the trumpet of prophesy. What prophesy? I wonder. She is gone and we remain. And yet, I can still feel the weight of her shrunken body in the empty hands of the clock and the misty rays of morning. She is here. Still here.

I breathe in the dust of the departed year pulling along with her the essence of eternity, infusing my blood with the Age. In my lungs are lodged the multiple pasts and all my future, burning itself into the DNA of my present. I am all, I am nothing, and I am yet to be. I am. And I will be.

It is 3:00 am. Soon the dawn will unroll her golden tapestry. On my desk 2013 smiles a toothless smile through the columned crib of her calender. As I finally lay to rest the year gone by, I re-invoke the poet who supplied the title of this post.

To love, and bear; to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change nor falter, nor repent...
This alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory...
                                          Percy Bysshe Shelley,
                                                Prometheus Unbound Act IV


A belated happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for animating The World According to Me.

sincerely,

The Creator.