Terminus: A Good Year

"Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television."

-From a speech by Gretchen's Favourite Person She Does Not Know Yet of 2009, Paul Hawken. To read the whole commencement speech to the University of Portland (about 10 minutes) check out http://www.up.edu/commencement/default.aspx?cid=9456&pid=3144

As the end of the month approaches, so does the end of the year. As the end of the year approaches, so does the end of the decade. Think about it: the end of the Noughts or Os or whatever lame moniker was once applied to the first few breaths of this new millenium.

I, for one, am happy to have them out of the way. I'm ready for this century to fall into adolescence, into the wonder years and tempestuous teens. Enough of this New Millenium stuff. None of us alive today will be around for the next new millenium except as dust particles, and none of you reading this will likely be around past 2060. Never having had a Life Plan that extended beyond a hazy few weeks or months, a year is about as broad a time frame as I can comprehend. But I like what I catch glimpses of ahead.

First, some reflections on the year that is passing. Good one, I think. Big break up, still remarkably amicable. This I am proud of. (Why I am suddenly writing like a cross between Yoda and an old Yiddish man, know do I?)

I'm proud of the fact that my ex and I are still able to love each other, with appropriate distance and limits. Recognize that this love is like squinting into the sun, smiling at each other and waving goodbye, one person on the departing ship and the other on the pier. This is actually how it is most of the time, despite flashes of anger and bitterness and sadness and confusion. Prosaically, this love may be possible because I've finished renovating the house and have it listed, and hope to have it sold by the spring. Or ironically, it may be because he listens to me more carefully and with greater respect than ever before.

One day, he will be a fine man for someone else. One day, I will be a great woman for someone else. First, we both have some figuring out to do and some business we need to take care of. If one believes (as I do) that you get the mate you deserve, then I want to be sure I'm fit to be in a relationship with someone I respect and desire.

This has been a great time for me to get physically fit, for the first time in years. This may have been a response to recognizing that my emotional fitness will take an indeterminate time and much reflection. Being in need of action, I can only target physical fitness. Now, if I don't exercise I am driven mad by an unsettling combination of goat-like horniness and bovine anxiety.

Truthfully, I am also vain. I have time for vanity these days, and find I like looking at myself if I have no one else to look at. Vain and rigorous, for I don't want to settle for an unfit body and poorish health as I have no valid excuse to do so.

A good year as well as I gained greater success in my career than ever before, then walked away from it. I still haven't found sure footing, but am unwavering in the rightness of my decision despite the financial hit I've taken, despite the cheap and pretty glories that could've been mine had I stayed in. It's good to have made the decision, and look back and know it was the right one even if the present is still sorting itself out.

A good year to fall in love with my friends, both new and old. I am lucky to have some very lovely people in my life. Thank you.

A very good year to rediscover myself sexually and romantically. I understand how some of you may blush on my behalf when it comes to my descriptions of sex toy shopping, but if I do not take charge of my own pleasure, who will? And why should I be circumspect about it? There's nothing romantic about masturbation--the word even has a smarmy, pseudo-scientific feel to it--but it's good to feel entitled to the control over when and how I get off, when I am alone.

When I am not alone, it is a question of romance, and what an endlessly fascinating question it is. An enigma I'm still trying to figure out, and likely will still be figuring out in the year ahead if I can curb my impatience.

I have a blind spot when it comes to seeing myself through the eyes of the one I want. Other men who want me beyond the comfortable boundaries of friendship are easy to read. It's the one I want that I can't fathom.

In response, my M.O. is to be somewhat inscrutable, friendly and to feign patience. The instinct to talk it out, in detail and at length, is a common one to my sex. But I instinctively have fought it this time, and I persist in thinking it a wise course of action. I've liked to think that I don't play games, have thought I was somehow above the artfulness practised by girlygirls both in fact and fiction. In the end, the direct and passionate heroine triumphs, right?

Well, perhaps. Experience has taught me the virtue in temperance, and the pleasure to be found in patience. I like the idea of each of us not quite knowing what to make of the other, and being interested in drawing the other out, and not having definitions for the feelings we may experience. Pleasure tempered with pain, bitter with sweet, curious and curiouser. Like Alice in Wonderland: not quite a game, more a strategy. Out of necessity, one developed on the fly. So be it, it's what I've chosen and at present, it suits.

Finally, this has been a good year from which to launch myself into a better one. I have no regrets about saying goodbye to it. I am cheerful and foolhardy in thinking 2010 will be full of joys and lessons and hard-earned victories.

Play well in December's wane, little ones. I hope this year has been as good to you as it has to me.

G/night
G

PS Back to the quote I started with, I cancelled my television service recently. The weather's too shit to see the stars, but I rent dvds and am writing a book. I'll let you know how it goes.