New Fire

Many of you already know that Logan has, as one friend put it, Run. This is distressing. Yet, unbelievably, I don't feel chagrined about my previous exuberant post. I still feel lucky. What?! Yes. My previous exuberant post is just a testament of my relentless (and sometimes nonsensical) optimism. No matter what kind of shit happens, I always expect the best of people. With the exception of our president. Ahem. I like this quality about myself. Others may see it as naiveté, warrantless positivism, me being a doormat, ignorance, flat-out idiocy, you name it. But I really do feel that things will work out, and I probably will write another exuberant post the next time something happens in my life which thrills me and that I feel is the most unbelievable good luck. I have sent out countless messages about such situations the past several years. Some of you may recall these three in particular: my three different teaching jobs--all instilling me with a fierce sense of victory and an unstoppable conviction to go out there and save the world through my newfound perfect job. All three lasted less than seven months. Do I feel chagrin about my initial enthusiasm and passion in the light of apparent failure? No. Am I speaking like Rumsfeld? Lord, yes! I know you are curious, so I will tell you this: Logan has a friend going out of the country for a month who needed a house-sitter. In the interest of saving money, she chose this rather than to move in with me.

My cat just fell out of the window. If anything can cheer a person up, it is a cat scrabbling about on top of a double-hung window and falling off, tangling herself up in the blinds on the way down. While I'm a bit (perhaps more, but I'll never admit the extent of it) depressed about my current situation, I still feel excited about this year. I have never felt the turning of a new year with the power that I feel in it now. I truly do feel that something new has happened; the past few days have been laced with a sparkle that I can't explain. Hope. I enjoy this in spite of, and perhaps because of, not knowing where this tiny spark of optimism is coming from. I feel that this is a truly new and shiny year more keenly than I have in nearly a decade. I have had some mildly philosophical discussions about New Year's Eve with a few friends during the past few days. It is an arbitrarily marked event, of course. It has no basis in reality or any intrinsic value or meaning. Each civilization has chosen a different moment at which to celebrate the turning of a new era, a new season, a new chance to get things right this time around: the renewal of the world.

The Aztec, in particular, had a new year ritual of which I’m particularly fond--probably because it involved fire. This particular ceremony was carried out once every 52 years, at the end of a full Calendar Round cycle. The Aztec calendar system is far too complex to explain here--I highly suggest further reading to you. The end of the 52-year cycle was a time of great trepidation for the Aztec--there was no guarantee that the world would continue; everything was in a state of flux, balanced upon the whims of the gods, who could decide that they had had enough of these silly humans and wipe them out if they chose (the Aztec believed that this current era was the “Fifth Sun”--the fifth incarnation of human creation; there was no guarantee of the perpetuity of this era, and the end of the Calendar Round signified a particularly vulnerable time in the cosmos). The night of the new year, all fires in the entire Aztec metropolis and outlying villages were extinguished. Every single one. I can imagine families sitting huddled in their huts around their cold hearths in the dark, full of fear of the unknown, wondering if the world was finally coming to an end. At midnight, priests watched the stars to make sure they would continue in their eternal paths. If the Pleiades crossed a particular point exactly at midnight, it was a sign that the world would continue and new fires were kindled (in the chest of a sacrificial victim) and carried by runners to every household. This was like the sun coming up again, granting life to humans by the grace of the gods once again.

This relates to us all, even today; we humans have always possessed a great love for ritual, ceremony, and pageantry. I am no exception. The designation of a new year, arbitrary as it may be, is a chance at renewal for all of us; we can start with new fire, a clean slate, refreshed and reborn.