The countdown
POSTED IN contemporary poetry, Stories December 31, 2015
The countdown
The last morning of this year. While the rest of the “crowd” still sleeps (holidays!), I enjoy my solitude watching the trees shivering naked in the wind. The soft and cozy armchair comforts me in the kitchen, the only place of the house that allows me to make noise, lit candles and smile to my thoughts, still protecting the early morning sleep of my dear ones.
The trees are watching me back. Another year was measured by their leaves. Silence and darkness, only the wind trying to impress a snowless last day of this year. Around ten o’clock a.m. the night will go to sleep and the daylight will shine upon us for a few hours. The Northern hemisphere is not quite heaven in winter, especially for someone like me, born in the sunlight.
What is the protocol for the last day of the year? Is there any? Every year I feel the same restless “thing” that I must do something to mark the end of another segment of my life and every year I feel like I did nothing. Yes, I prepare food, drinks, the festive atmosphere. Yes, I write my feelings, thoughts in a diary to remember. And yet I am not satisfied. Something is missing. When someone dies, there are funerals to attend, to honor their passing. When a year dies what shall be done?
When I was a child my parents used “to shoot” the old year, open the windows wide at midnight for the new born year to enter the house and bring new good luck. I believed in what they did. I still do. Somehow the symbol of their tradition lost its roots here, in my country of adoption: new land, new meanings, old nostalgia.
So, apparently nothing could satisfy my need to mark the death of the 365th day of the year 2015. The TV is annoying, same old words, faces, tricks.
People outside seem to prepare themselves for the same old fights: shopping, dressing, camouflaging their faces for the parties.
Make up to cover up the wrinkles, the worries, the disappointments, the sadness, the loneliness, the compromising, the cheating, the faking, the boredom…
Only the true happiness needs no mask at all.
They seem ready for the countdown at midnight and for screaming “Happy New Year 2015”, wishing secretly or loud to be kissed by somebody (and to remember nothing or to regrette everything by the morning of January the 1st) while the champagne pours everywhere.
Cliché. The most cliché of all the clichés.
I would like to enter a monastery at midnight and thank Life for another year. Yes, that would make me happy. To light a candle and give thanks for those who are still alive in my life, those who are alive in the war, those who escape war and become free people, those who escape illness, children who really get help in the starving part of the world. To pray for those who lead countries and continents to be wiser and more honest, more human, less selfish, less greedy. To pray for the helpless, the blind, the deaf, the powerful, the killer, the preachers, the seekers of true light. To pray for peace on Earth.
But, I don’t need a monastery to do all of these. I can do it reasonably well here, in my kitchen, my humble sanctuary.
So, today, this morning of the 31th of December 2015, before daylight, I pray for one more year, I thank for all the years, I join hands with my naked trees and I kiss the old heaven, each cloud, each shivering star, each wounded branch, each bird, for the dying year.
Then I light up the new born stars, a blue moon, I paint some smoking chimneys on the old houses, a Christmas Tree for every child, an open window for the new year waiting to be born.
Then all my past years, dead and buried in my heart will know that I grew up with them, they taught me life, they taught me well…
Well, sleepy voices tell me that my fortress of solitude will be invaded by smiling sleepy faces soon.
Happy New Year 2016, my beloved Life!
Maria Magdalena Biela
2 COMMENTS
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Wonderful vignette Mag! Happy 2016.
I did not thank you for these kind thoughts but never is too late, right? All my heart, your Mag.