Trice New: A Blank Slate

Today is a new beginning, in many ways (I’m always looking for an excuse on the calendar to say so!). It is the Lunar New Year in the Chinese tradition, the Celtic festival of Imbolc (signaling the beginning of spring), and, up in the skies, there is a new moon in Aquarius (the sign of the moon at the time of my birth - so it’s a bit personal).

I interpret this as another opportunity to begin again, and, since we are at the midpoint between winter and the start of spring, to start fantasizing about what seeds I will plant, literally and figuratively. What I want the harvest to look like at the autumn equinox.

It feels more genuine than the New Year’s Day on January 1 (the most important new year’s day for me is my birthday), and I’ve had time, after the stress of the holidays, to think about my vision for 2022.

It is both simple and hard: I want to do less, sleep more, fear less, create more.

Next month will be an anniversary I don’t think Hallmark has yet developed cards for: March 9, the day the “pandemic” began. The day before, I took that last stroll in Soho after work, wondering if what my employer said was really true: stay home for two weeks to “flatten the curve.” Two years later, and I am still home.

I had an inexplicable feeling that I was being lied to. But I also had a smirk on my face, as I walked in what felt like a slow-motion fashion, taking pictures of simple, everyday things in my path, not knowing when I’d be back. I was free, and something new was being born somewhere into the future - again.

A scene from the movie, French Toast (2015).