On New Years day, I awoke in my bed in my baby blue Rodarte dress, carefully chosen to ring in the new year and now longing for its previous and more stable home on a lonely wooden hanger. After noticing the absence of one five hundred dollar shoe, I felt immediate panic followed by a tickled association between myself and Cinderella. This self appreciation, however, I dismissed rather quickly upon my first glimpse in my mirror. My Grace Kelly curls now resembled more of an Ethel Mertz coif, and I realized, like Cinderella, after the stroke of midnight New Years Eve presents nothing more than a slow and steady demise.
Rest assured, I am not referring to excessive drinking. Sure, I honored the festivities and and befriended a crystal flute of bubbles. I looked into the eyes of all my dearest and toasted the new year with genuine optimism. The debauchery, however, I left to the usual suspects, and returned home somewhat soberly and undeniably somberly with the sun at my back and threatening to rise.
I lay wide awake in my bed overwhelmed by the gravity of the once approaching, now fully present, daunting New Year.
Why such a dismal outlook to the turn of the New Year? On the first, I come face to face with my greatest foe. Immediately following the highlight of my calendar, January is an unwelcomed and aggressively punctual occurrence to succeed a month of merry entertainment and pleasant reinforcement of relationships.
A green and fragrant Evergreen challenges its namesake and finds a home on a curb; brown and brittle, it impatiently awaits a dump truck kept company by puddles which, erect, once answered to ”Frosty”. All that is left of these snowmen now are pools of sleet, housing irrelevant and soiled items such as a scarf, buttons, corn cobs, and of course, a single carrot which in its prime was a nose, but today is a reminder of the fleeting nature of holiday content.
We are given one day to accommodate this transition. We are given one night to mourn the loss of the year and welcome the next. Nostalgia for what is left behind rivals excitement for all that lies ahead, and the focus falls on an assessment of what we have, what we don’t, and what we desperately need to obtain beginning on January first.
On New Years Eve I crumble at the mercy of the persistent hands of a clock. Any effort to prolong the stroke of midnight are made in vain, as the seconds arrive in unwavering and mathematical succession and the impending doom of the a new calendar year looms in a daunting queue in the rafters.
This year, I resolve to embrace my enemy. I will transform my dislike to an affection so strong that I must stay up all night on the thirty first, desperate to absorb every last moment of the once hated, though clearly only misunderstood, month of January.
I now have moss green German leather gloves with gold grommets that warm my hands sometimes even after I have gone indoors. Similarly, I have learned that hats are not just a novelty and instead a necessity! If worn on a cold day, believe it or not, they do much more than accessorize the last ten percent of a once incomplete outfit. My cozy queen size bed is adorned with an electric blanket, consistently warmed to level nine, and just at the foot rests hand sewn mohair bunny slippers compliments of my mother. My cabinets are stocked with chai and chamomile tea and hot cocoa, my drawers with heavy wool socks, and my calendar filled with cozy dinner parties where I will sip hot cider with friends and watch the snow fall through hand-smeared windows in a foggy pane of glass.
It is this outlook that will transform this month for me. For New Years I resolve to have the best January I possibly can. Therefore, on the first day of the year, I ignored my lethargy and leaped from my bed to cook black eyed peas and collard greens and treat my best friends to a special dinner and good luck for the entire year. It is this same luck that I wish for myself as I anticipate the forthcoming where, using this day as an example, I take whatever I am given and even if it is not immediately desirable, transform any hand into the perfect play.
I believe in a reciprocated exchange of energy, and I believe that ultimately you are given what you put out into the world. Take note, 2010: this year, I am expecting some really magical gifts.
This year, I spent a long time reflecting on Christmas holidays of my childhood. It seems as though in the past, the celebration was more all-encompassing. I sat in my living room and gazed at a beautifully decorated evergreen tree and realized, at four years old, our freshly cut fir was relatively five times my height. The glass of eggnog poured by my mother filled a mug so large, I could barely grasp it within my meager grip and and when eagerly sipping this sweet novelty, it successfully covered my entire face. We toasted marshmallows in our home fireplace and I timidly offered a long, thin stick as a barrier between myself and my carefully secured treat, which was lapped by the flames of a fire twice my size.
I tried to picture a room, scaled to accommodate my adult proportions, filled with beautifully wrapped boxes that were large enough to stand in, trees tall enough to play beneath the boughs, and unlimited challenges presented in obstacles around every corner. Massive cookies in jars just higher than reach are decorated with festive icing and sprinkles and present the omnipresent incentive to build stairs to the countertop. The prize, I should note, by equal scale today, would be a cookie the size of a dinner plate.
Whispered rumors of Santa Clause and his flying reindeer kept me awake during this winter month, but in retrospect I have trouble understanding how I was able to sleep for the remaining eleven. The entire world poses as a playground to a child, because in addition to toys and fantasy and make-believe, every day objects are simply so large in comparison that it is hard to not acknowledge this real life fun house.
I do my best to carry the whimsy of a child in my every day life. It would be a shame to overlook this forgotten magic, or to abandon the belief that all the world was made for our entertainment. The trick to adulthood is to maintain this optimism when the conditions are not as ideal. When restaurants do not offer, in addition to a meal, a small prize and perhaps a jungle gym or slide to climb while waiting for the food.
There are special secrets for adults, too. It is an every day scavenge to find them, and the treasure is perhaps even more fulfilling on account of the arousing and challenging pursuit.
See you soon, NYC!
But I am really proud of this broad……
Last day in NYC till twenty ten.
Homeward bound and in the highest spirits!
With the help of Hanna Barbera and Aldous Huxley, creators of The Jetsons and A Brave New World, respectively, ideals of the future are manufactured and instilled in our minds and loom in impending doom, as always, just around the corner. Permanently affixed as mere premonitions, these concepts are too enveloped in their placement as “the future” to be recognized by society as they approach our lives and appear in our surroundings with increasing omnipresence. Barbera and Huxley may have been incredible story tellers, however more notably should be viewed in their role as shamans of the future. They envisioned a world and painted it for us in 24-bit color and equally variegated literature. They taught us to anticipate a space age filled with highly advanced technological gadgets, populated by a pharmaceutically complacent and sedated humanity.
While speculating over these predictions, I use the universal digital library of information popularly known as Google to research such concepts further. Upon viewing the results for the search terms “The Jetsons,” I find myself in the dull and seemingly prehistoric present day, fantasizing about robotic devices and clever technological inventions. I set my laptop computer aside when interrupted by a call on my iPhone, but return at once upon completion of my conversation with a friend in California, ignorant of the irony in my eagerness to continue researching “the future”.
When I read A Brave New World, I imagined an existence as far from the present as it is from reality. Not dissimilar to the books I read about the future and programs I watched supporting its allure, I was entirely void of cognizance in a world which simultaneously fulfilled its prophecies.
My dismal mood is accredited to these revelations. Aside from the fact that in many ways, modern technology has highly surpassed such predictions of the future, I am more so affected by my contemplation of the Soma pill used to sedate and resolve discontentment.
Modern medicine has managed to scratch the branded s-o-m-a from the infamous pills and restructure both their appearance and appeal. They are successfully camouflaged and hide in their masquerade behind mirrors of medicine cabinets, nestled in the pockets of troubled teens, or beneath the bottomless drawers of their equally plagued predecessors. No, I am not against pharmaceutical drugs or psychosomatic medicines. I am, however, highly against their abuse.
We can determine the termination of our involvement with The Jetsons by a simple touch of a button, or evade this Brave New World through the closing of a book. We think nothing more of these fantastic ideas in our daily lives when taking pills to slightly soften the reality of the day, or alternatively, to avoid it altogether.
I have lost my two greatest friends to abuse of prescription pharmaceutical pills. Science has progressed from fiction to fact and it is with this realization that I anxiously await the sequel to these foreboding and consummate predictions.
We have created a society we cannot endure with sobriety. I am left to wonder how all of this might one day be reversed. If only there were some sort of pill …
Sharing separate articles of a two-piece ensemble, I pose with a best friend on the eve of her departure for an engagement and new life with fiance in Argentina. She wears her favorite platforms, I wear her patchwork Pradas, and we celebrate a momentous, if temporary, visit among friends. With increasing progression, I watch as my closest disperse across the globe. It seems the farther they go and the further they evolve, the harder (and for this exception I permit such a colloquial expression), it tugs at my heartstrings.
I feel a paper map is in order, one that I’ll adorn with stars as new places transform from anonymous bullets to tender homes. I’ll seek comfort in this constellation and delight in the formation of patterns, no matter how dispersed, we will collectively form across a sprawling and infinite sky.
Congratulations Miss, soon to be Mrs, Hayden Lewis!
