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Observations from a Working Poet
#253/223 A Word for the Year PDF Print E-mail

Like many of you, I've learned through personal experience that making New Year's resolutions is idiotic. It's such common practice in America, though, I think a little discussion may be in order. And I have an alternative to suggest.

We've all eaten and drunk our way through December, and now it's time for remorse, regrouping, and resolutions. We're going to lose weight, stop smoking, exercise regularly and learn Spanish or Mandarin, all while cutting down on the cocktails and only driving ten miles over the speed limit. There's one big flaw in this logic that no one ever mentions, though, and it's timing. If we were making resolutions on Memorial Day or the 4th of July, our chances of success would skyrocket. Warm weather and blue skies encourage happiness, and happiness encourages success. Trying to improve ourselves in January is just silly. In January, we should be sitting in front of the fire reading books or dozing, like the big mammals we are.

My friend Jane has a better idea of what to do on January 1st: pick a word for the year. This is something you can ruminate on before the fire or curled under your blankets just before you fall asleep. Choosing a word doesn't go against the seasonal requirements of your inner Grizzly.

In my five years of following this practice, the minute I open my mind to find a word, the word finds me instead. And won't go away, even when I want it to. “Surrender” was one from a few years ago that I just hated. I wanted “love” or “kindness,” something overtly positive. But “surrender” turned out to be fruitful: I learned a lot when I asked, in times of confusion during that year, “what would happen if I surrendered?”

What choosing a word does is to open up the year before you. It gives you something to explore, to look forward to and pay attention to as the weeks roll by. Sometimes you'll forget your word and need to be reminded. But it's working on you nonetheless, whether you pay careful attention or not. You're in a relationship with it that will unfold, as opposed to a resolution, which is more of a chore to be done: it's a finite idea with no room for movement, it chides you.

Once you and your word have found each other, it's good to look up the derivation in a respectable dictionary and learn its origins. Cherish is the word that claimed me this week — a 14th century word with tri-fold roots in the Latin “carus,” which means “dear,” the Old Irish “carae,” or friend, and the Sanskrit “kama,” love. I also like its definitions of “nurture,” and “to harbor in the mind deeply and resolutely.”

Usually what I discover from my word isn't something I ever could have predicted. Try it, and see what happens to you.

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#252 The Best Christmas Present PDF Print E-mail

My kitchen looks like Santa's elves had a drunken hootenanny here during the night. Drawers pulled out, counters covered with dishes and Xmas wrapping, one of the rugs scrumpled up in a corner and a cat sleeping on top of it. There are little paint-sample jars in gray and terra cotta, matching the squares of paint slapped here and there on the wall.

I woke up around six and revived the fire, kind of muddle-headedly. When I walked into the kitchen I just started laughing. I'm the sort of person who likes a lot of uncluttered surfaces — my eye and brain can rest and get on with other tasks when the spaces around me are clear. You'd never know this today! But it's all good.

I was at the tail end of a drawer-and-cabinet purging when I realized I couldn't live with the kitchen's yellow walls one more minute. Now that there's a big window into the living room, whose nectary, peachy-yellow color I adore, the slight lemon cast of the kitchen's hue is a shocking clash. Some people don't notice. My friend who built the window matched the living room color and then touched-up both rooms with it, thinking they were the same. But for me, it's fingernails-on-a-blackboard painful from every angle.

I admit I've been a maniac about fixing up the kitchen. It started with trying to save money, of course, and you know how that goes. My wood stove leaked so badly last year, I couldn't use it for one more winter. So I sold an old engagement ring and bought a new, efficient, smaller stove, which could be fit into a corner, leaving a blank wall that I then opened up the way I've wanted to since I bought this house. That change will help heat distribution and over time, I'll save a bundle on firewood, pressed logs, and propane, but in the meantime I lost three cabinets and had to reorganize everything, and the grating of incompatible yellows was revealed. Three months later, I'm almost done with the big purge and about to start on the paint. This is what I'm giving myself for Christmas. It's not the best present I got, though.

I've been trying to get my mortgage modified for the last three years, to no avail. I can't begin to describe the crazy-making nature of this process, but you can read about it in any newspaper. Maybe you think it's also a little crazy to start home improvements on a house in jeopardy. And you might be right. But it also could be the case that my acting as though the house was really mine tipped some balance in the universe.

Because on my doorstep yesterday morning was the paperwork for a loan modification, with numbers I can live with. It wasn't wrapped in green tissue paper and tied with a red bow — I just imagined that part. Perhaps December light refracted through tears has that effect.

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