NEW YEAR~=~ NEW HOPES

 For as long as we keep marking and noting the passing of years, we will continue to count on hope that the numerical change of the counter will bring other changes for the better. 

Because the alternative (nothing new under the sun) sucks the wind out of our sails.

So, on that sentiment, here's to renewed hope. The messiah is never here, but the messiah is always, and still, coming 🙏

💜HAPPY NEW YEAR💜

SO, AGAIN— WHAT’S WITH THE CALENDAR?

 

Or…

🎇Happy New Year🎇

A new calendar year spells a new beginning; a new (or renewed) chance at getting it right. A renewed hope that the faux-pas of the past would be left on the side of the road, and the motors (echo-clean, what else) would propel smoothly and the world would~~~

🌈Live happily ever after🌈

We know better. But hope ignites at the very mention of the new year.

 

Here’s my wish to all: the wisdom and strength to understand and cope with what’s ahead.

Now go forth and prosper.

My Little Phoenix

 

I have this orchid plant that I’ve given up for dead too many times to count. 

It was given to me too long ago to remember who the giver was. Back then, it had a long elegant  stem with two large leaves at the bottom and a cluster of three open blossoms on top. It reminded me of a giraffe, my favorite animal.

 

I don’t have a green thumb. If fact, you would not be insulting me if you called my thumb grayish black. I expected my new friend to last about as long as the rest of the plants formerly in my care and now in in great garden in the sky.

 

True to my prediction, the orchid died. Its blossoms shriveled and its leaves got yellow and then brown. I was ready to add it to my weekly garbage pickup at the curb on pick up day, but for some reason  I kept forgetting to do it.

 

For another reason I will never fully understand, I kept giving this dead plant a weekly watering. It was a sort of, “as long as you’re here, might as well...”

 

It surprised me. New leaves replaced the old ones, and new blossoms appeared, like hands clawing up from a grave.

 

Another person gave me a second orchid. It, too, joined the first in the cycles of death and re-birth.

 

The last year has been hard, and despite all the TLC and the happy talk I gave, both orchid plants had finally given up. I was sad, but nothing lives forever.

 

And then, this happened:

I think of it like the muse, whose death is an illusion.

The FUTURE?

The other day, a writing friend said it was hard for him to write to an unknown future.

I offered that the future, by definition, is unknown.

“But with all that is going on, it’s hard to plan,” he said.

True.

My suggestion, which is also what I do, is plan anyway.

There’s a paraphrasing of an old Islamic Hadith, said by Martin Luther King Jr., “Even if I knew the world is going to end tomorrow, I would plant a tree."

Works for me.

What does this mean in real life context? I’m writing, while making sure we have enough toilet paper for the next who-knows-what. I can’t plan for every shortage, so if the next one will center on hairnets, tea or open-toe sandals, I may not have a sufficient stash. But I will have toilet paper, and also writing paper, and enough sense to know that there’s never a better time to plant a tree.

Onwards.

WHO IS THE READER?

When my father lectured university age students, he told me that in his mind he would focus on one student as he talked. This made it possible to impart what general thoughts and wisdom he had while keeping the thread personal.

Keeping a personal narrative is essential to have it be a compelling and emotionally evocative voice. Fiction writers know this is vital to good storytelling.

Who is the reader? I realized long ago that, for me writing for younger readers, the reader is who I was back then at the intended reader’s age.

Only it isn’t really. I see through a lens of my understanding of now. Obviously, this is not the real young me of then, but who I have come to think I was.

Confusing?

The attempt to reach a reader is always an act of faith. You can’t hold it in your hands and verify the path with your eyes. Faith, augmented with hope, is the engine that drives the telling of a fiction story to a fictional reader.

The goal is one—

Saying “hello there,” and hoping to connect with you.

Greeting a NEW YEAR

To the purely rational mind, January first is just another day. This year it is a Tuesday. Another Tuesday.

But the change of a digit on the year-counter has an almost magical effect on the parts of us that are not purely rational.

A new year, and a parade of new hopes and dreams.

Some take stock in the year that just ended, achievements and regrets. I find myself doing that on the Jewish New Year, (Rosh Hashanah) as the ten days that follow it are meant to be days of reflection culminating in atonement. The secular New Year (Gregorian counter) is a time for renewed oomph and hope. No resolutions, just a vow to march on with stars in my eyes.

On January first, the verses of Thomas Hardy’s (1840-1928) Song of Hope are singing in my ears:

O sweet To-morrow! - 
After to-day 
There will away 
This sense of sorrow. 
Then let us borrow 
Hope, for a gleaming 
Soon will be streaming, 
Dimmed by no gray - 
No gray! 

While the winds wing us 
Sighs from The Gone, 
Nearer to dawn 
Minute-beats bring us; 
When there will sing us 
Larks of a glory 
Waiting our story 
Further anon - 
Anon! 

Doff the black token, 
Don the red shoon, 
Right and retune 
Viol-strings broken; 
Null the words spoken 
In speeches of rueing, 
The night cloud is hueing, 
To-morrow shines soon - 
Shines soon!

Happy New Year!