revisitations

"One may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the same margins, return to the same things in one's work, re-learn the same emotional truths, over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life."

(M. Nelson, The Argonauts)

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And then, almost as quickly as it began, it is over.

Christmas. New Years. B's Wedding. 

I tuck away string lights in the attic, and sweep up  what remains of the evergreen needles—bits and pieces blown into corners, caught in the carpet. 

Sometimes I think about the concepts of up and down. How in life we are faced with one or the other, and how often I make the choice of the latter rather than the former. Down to what is comfortable. Down the elevator or the stairs, to solid ground,  or backwards, inside, back to what I know. Moving down or standing still, are so much easier that forward and upward. Onward and outward. Not inward so much as pulling myself farther in and farther up.

I suppose there is no bravery without a little trembling, so I am pushing myself to be braver this year. Revisiting old goals and digging up old dreams that I buried back when pursuing them felt like just too much to bear. 

I was thinking these things over the weekend, while I was climbing ladders, wiring pine boughs and ivy into great swags of greenery befitting a January wedding.  The flowers and the weekend had nothing to do with bravery, but thoughts strike when they will, and twenty-eight corsages later I'd found myself down a rabbit-hole from which there was no return.

In the end, it is all a matter of action, I suppose. To see. To do.  Even then, its not how you do it, so much as that you just did it. 

So, here is to choosing up and pushing forward.