I am nervous as the new year approaches. The year behind me has taught me only one thing: I have no idea what is going to happen next. For better or worse.
But I am also eager for it, because I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Those of us that tend to be a wee bit reflective go into reflectivity hyperdrive today. To help break my reflections into bite-size chunks for the sake of your digestive system, I’ve asked Thomas Hardy and his poem on the end of a year (erhm, well, the end of the 19th century, but still) titled: "The Darkling Thrush" for their help.
I’ve gotten a lot of help this year.
But I am also eager for it, because I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Those of us that tend to be a wee bit reflective go into reflectivity hyperdrive today. To help break my reflections into bite-size chunks for the sake of your digestive system, I’ve asked Thomas Hardy and his poem on the end of a year (erhm, well, the end of the 19th century, but still) titled: "The Darkling Thrush" for their help.
I’ve gotten a lot of help this year.
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
A great ending began the year. She was gone, and all the trappings that follow. The apartment, the family, most of the mutual friends, comfort, security, support…vanished. An epoch of my life gone as suddenly as it came. The decision to come to Sweden in the first place thrown into question: had it all been a waste of time? And the major decision that was to set all of the events of this past year into motion: to stay or go? A major question to set up a year of perpetual major questions and decisions.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
And so I chose to stay. Mostly because the feeling of walking away was too hard to bear, that thought of throwing away everything I had spent a year scraping together. Two friends down south took me in for a little while to give me time to make this decision (which I am deeply grateful for), and two friends in town gave me a place to stay until I could get myself together (which was more influential for my life than they’ll ever know). But this was, perhaps, the most awful period of my life. I finally reached out and started the internship with the company whose name had been in the back of my mind since before I moved to Sweden, and started the weekend-job-which-must-not-be-named on top of it. A lot of work. Not a lot of money. Alone. Far from home. No place of my own. And when I found a room to rent, it only got worse.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
For ten months there was no place I felt comfortable. Beyond the life-altering decisions I was faced with and emotional strain of adjusting to being alone in a foreign land, there was an apartment and roommate waiting that I simply avoided as much as possible. I spent a lot of time wandering those days. Again, my saving grace was my friends. An old one that happened to live next door, and new ones found along the way. Still, things slid down and down. And as the resentment of my life and of this country built to an intolerable pitch, just as I decided it was time to cut my losses and get the fuck out of Dodge because I had no idea anymore why I was struggling to make a life in this place that I had lost all hope for, the breaks came. My own place. No more weekend job. And then I slowly began remembering why I decided to stay at the beginning of the year and give this life a chance. I never realized how long it would take for things to come together (if my hours in Sweden were a förening, that would be their motto), but they were finally getting there.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Which isn’t to say the year ended on a resoundingly positive note, or that there isn’t a long way yet to go. Certain seedy things happened as 2007 drew to a close that put a damper on any progress, and the question of where I really want to be in this world still burns inside me. But in retrospect, it is nice to at least not feel as utterly crippled and desperate as I did at the turn of 2006. Despite having lost my hair and feeling as though I’ve aged a great deal.
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
A great ending began the year. She was gone, and all the trappings that follow. The apartment, the family, most of the mutual friends, comfort, security, support…vanished. An epoch of my life gone as suddenly as it came. The decision to come to Sweden in the first place thrown into question: had it all been a waste of time? And the major decision that was to set all of the events of this past year into motion: to stay or go? A major question to set up a year of perpetual major questions and decisions.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
And so I chose to stay. Mostly because the feeling of walking away was too hard to bear, that thought of throwing away everything I had spent a year scraping together. Two friends down south took me in for a little while to give me time to make this decision (which I am deeply grateful for), and two friends in town gave me a place to stay until I could get myself together (which was more influential for my life than they’ll ever know). But this was, perhaps, the most awful period of my life. I finally reached out and started the internship with the company whose name had been in the back of my mind since before I moved to Sweden, and started the weekend-job-which-must-not-be-named on top of it. A lot of work. Not a lot of money. Alone. Far from home. No place of my own. And when I found a room to rent, it only got worse.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
For ten months there was no place I felt comfortable. Beyond the life-altering decisions I was faced with and emotional strain of adjusting to being alone in a foreign land, there was an apartment and roommate waiting that I simply avoided as much as possible. I spent a lot of time wandering those days. Again, my saving grace was my friends. An old one that happened to live next door, and new ones found along the way. Still, things slid down and down. And as the resentment of my life and of this country built to an intolerable pitch, just as I decided it was time to cut my losses and get the fuck out of Dodge because I had no idea anymore why I was struggling to make a life in this place that I had lost all hope for, the breaks came. My own place. No more weekend job. And then I slowly began remembering why I decided to stay at the beginning of the year and give this life a chance. I never realized how long it would take for things to come together (if my hours in Sweden were a förening, that would be their motto), but they were finally getting there.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Which isn’t to say the year ended on a resoundingly positive note, or that there isn’t a long way yet to go. Certain seedy things happened as 2007 drew to a close that put a damper on any progress, and the question of where I really want to be in this world still burns inside me. But in retrospect, it is nice to at least not feel as utterly crippled and desperate as I did at the turn of 2006. Despite having lost my hair and feeling as though I’ve aged a great deal.
On reflection, I am struck by how this most difficult of years has been neatly framed, with a clear beginning, middle and end. Maybe I am predisposed to see things in that context. Maybe we all are.
But I am inherently distrustful of arbitrary turning points, so herein I lay down no resolutions. I have too many that never sleep already. One in particular is very angry with me. I hope I can appease it in the coming year. But as I’ve learned, simply hoping for things is an utterly masturbatory affair. I’m too old for that now. Time to put up. Or shut up.
Yet somehow hope is the most important thing of all. It kept me here. And when it went away I was ready to go with it. And when it came back things changed all over again. So I leave the final thought of 2007 a hopeful one to help brace ourselves for the trials lurking ahead.
From "In Memoriam" by Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
