THE THREAD | 'Tis the season to be . . . what exactly?
’Tis the season to be . . . what exactly?
To be jolly? To be lonely? To be angry or grieving? Merry and bright?
’Tis the season for better verbs than to be, for something other than to be followed by a static state of emotion. As if to be jolly were solid and contained, an object you chose off a shelf. As if to be merry and bright operated by light switch. As if to be hopeful were a stone and not a seed in need of water and soil and sunlight.
’Tis the season to begin again, this time with better verbs. Verbs that affirm you are more than one emotion at a time, that you are in motion, that you will move through the finitude of a feeling.
’Tis the season to bereave, to leave and to be left alone, bereft of those who have passed and of those who have not passed, for the many small passings of moments without them. Those who grieve your absence and whose absence you grieve.
’Tis the season to behave, to stay within boundaries that are ever moving, to be a strange kind of brave by staying distant or away.
’Tis the season to beware. To take care of yourself first and be wary of others, the stranger on the street stepping too close to you with a smile exposed. Smiles are to be hidden, smiles are forbidden. Smiles revealed become repellant. To find footing in an endless advent, drawn to the promise the mask will be removed, the smile revealed and holy, but not yet. To live in the expectation of time that is not any time soon.
’Tis the season to beseech, to beg an urgent pleading. Reaching out from the unraveling end of a thread, a thread you can hold and climb and follow back toward whatever tethers you on the other end. The voice of a dear friend.
’Tis the season to betray, to give away the precise location of the despair staking claim in the basement of your heart. To besiege, to surround the despair cowered in the corner, you fully armed, surrounding it with the arms of love, lifting up the shriveled figure, carrying it out of the darkness where despair thrives, deprived of the light. Despair is the stone hope declines to become.
’Tis the season to bemuse, to bewilder, to perplex. To become a bit lost. The tectonic plates of certainties and best-laid plans have shifted beneath our path. This is not the journey you had in mind. This is not what you meant by Teach me thy way, O Lord.
To become one of these verbs, to become all of them at different times and move through them. Or to become none, to find one that fits for now, that keeps you in motion.
Still available: To believe. To belong. To beget.
~ ~ ~
What I'm reading: Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, the latest issue of AGNI
What I'm listening to: Andrew Bird's Hark!, Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings' All The Good Times are Past & Gone, Guarneri Quartet Plays Mozart
What I'm sipping on this season: a Chartreuse cocktail named The Written Word
~ ~ ~
Love and light,
Andrew