Books lie by his pillow.
A short bundle of five or six
that he currently covets.
When he lies down,
they must loom like mountains
in a rather steep
and quietly lonely,
ascent.
There’s an old radio too.
Or what looks like it.
Vintage, he calls it.
Nostalgia dripping much too visibly,
as fancy rust
chips onto his bedspread
in flecks of what he sometimes hopes
is martian sand.
A forlorn pen
lies someway off.
A sentinel,
almost a compass.
On a heavily dog-eared yet
hardly-used notebook.
The bed is a sea,
and he, The Voyager.
The books the iceberg
he must conquer
to win
that which is hurriedly scribbled
within closed flaps
of oblivious notebooks.
In reality,
with a fresh bedspread,
the books find their bed
behind an aesthetic lamp.
The radio soon covers
what’s left of the deconstructed iceberg.
The pen is discarded.
Dog-eared notebook
endearingly lost
in a bag with the laptop.
It’s dog-ears will soon be ironed out
and spine curved
to the screen.
In another reality,
The dog ears still ironed out,
but spine remained erect.
Pen discarded,
but remembered in heavy leaves.
The books still found their way
off the bed,
behind the well-lit radio.
But one by one,
and a lot spent.
He sleeps content on the
new bedspread.
In yet another,
he never sleeps on the bed again.
The learned books,
the thought-provoking pen,
the discerning radio,
the almost published notebook,
hold his scent
for those who pay homage to him.
In yet another,
He reads a rather perturbing
prose off his screen,
sighs,
and wonders...
Celebrating New Years and pegging the beginning of the year to significant milestones has been around since about 2000 BC! Although back then, in Agrarian times that were defined by season, this made way more sense.
In fact, once the Julian calendar was adopted, the month of January itself was named after the two-faced Roman God - Janus. And its not as sinister as it sounds - one of his faces looked forward to new beginnings, and the other reflected on the past.
In 1813, the phase "New Year Resolutions" was first officially used (by a newspaper in Boston) and the rest is history, or in our case, present.
It's officially the end of this year's first week, and the celebratory mood has given way to the reality of immovable time. Maybe we're all not built in images of Janus, but this is an opportunity to decide which side we face. As someone told me very recently, "Yes 30 years of your life are behind you and then another. Mostly (and then they crossed their fingers) another 30-60 (or more) remain. Even if you take only 31 more, the time you've spent and that you've got is exactly equal. There's no coin-toss, no eye-spy; just a choice, which 31 do you choose everyday?"
The prose herein speaks about resolutions, our intentions behind them, and how possibilities shape the most banal of things into physical milestones of our actions. Which reality speaks to you?