Sunday
Jan022011
electric hand dryer on: hello, 2011.
Sunday, January 2, 2011 at 11:01AM
Have you ever sat down in a public bathroom, needing to go, but intimidated by the bustle of a dozen must-certainly-be-listening women [or men], cannot? Everyone is going. It's fine. It's a bathroom. This is what it is for. No need to be embarrassed. No need to be intimidated.
Someone flushes the toilet, or starts the hand dryer, and then you can. Someone has to cause a distraction.
Everyone is writing about 2010.
Everyone is writing about 2011.
I haven't been able to. I've wanted to. And, in the spirit of 2010, Alison's Year of Simultaneous Opposites, I've also not wanted to. But loudly, everyone else is, so I can. Just quietly. Ponderously. Tentatively.
I've wondered what seasons are for. I didn't have a progression through seasons in 2010. Starting in January, the heat of summer, only to leave for the US in February, spending time on the brittle and chilly East Coast of North America [top to bottom: Nova Scotia, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina] until April, returning to a less cold-but but-becoming chilly Tasmania, only to return to New Jersey in its swelteriest [yes] in June, staying until early August. I returned to Tasmania in its height of frost, which didn't subside until September, and we're only just now warming to a sunny and slightly uncomfortable-but-really-not-bad-at-all, very mild summer.
So, I've been thrown.
Back and forth between hot and cold and sun and rain, I've watched things become simultaneously more complicated and more simple. I've understood more and less. I've talked more about the things I used to talk less about, less about the things that would once come up more often. I've made people proud and disappointed in the same action. I've run away from something and towards something else in the same step. I've cried about happy things. Laughed about sad things. Cried and laughed about both. I've been miserable about how inconvenient [but delicious all the same] it is that the guy I love is separated from me by my wench nemesis, the Pacific Ocean. I've been elated in the fact that he exists at all, even with the interference of Her Majesty Pacific.
And so, instead of being too concerned with dwelling on bad events, or wondering about the reoccurrence of good ones in the new year, what we might accomplish or feel or win or fail at, maybe at the end of a year, we could question our willingness to give it back.
I wouldn't give 2010 back. Not to anyone.
In depths of 2010's twenty-one and twenty-two year old confusion, uselessness, joyfulness, playfulness, rebelliousness, frivolity [threw that in there to break up the nesses], and impetuousness, I was never certain if things were going right, or wrong, or both. I can definitely say I know more.
That's a start.
Hello, 2011.
Someone flushes the toilet, or starts the hand dryer, and then you can. Someone has to cause a distraction.
Everyone is writing about 2010.
Everyone is writing about 2011.
I haven't been able to. I've wanted to. And, in the spirit of 2010, Alison's Year of Simultaneous Opposites, I've also not wanted to. But loudly, everyone else is, so I can. Just quietly. Ponderously. Tentatively.
I've wondered what seasons are for. I didn't have a progression through seasons in 2010. Starting in January, the heat of summer, only to leave for the US in February, spending time on the brittle and chilly East Coast of North America [top to bottom: Nova Scotia, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina] until April, returning to a less cold-but but-becoming chilly Tasmania, only to return to New Jersey in its swelteriest [yes] in June, staying until early August. I returned to Tasmania in its height of frost, which didn't subside until September, and we're only just now warming to a sunny and slightly uncomfortable-but-really-not-bad-at-all, very mild summer.
So, I've been thrown.
Back and forth between hot and cold and sun and rain, I've watched things become simultaneously more complicated and more simple. I've understood more and less. I've talked more about the things I used to talk less about, less about the things that would once come up more often. I've made people proud and disappointed in the same action. I've run away from something and towards something else in the same step. I've cried about happy things. Laughed about sad things. Cried and laughed about both. I've been miserable about how inconvenient [but delicious all the same] it is that the guy I love is separated from me by my wench nemesis, the Pacific Ocean. I've been elated in the fact that he exists at all, even with the interference of Her Majesty Pacific.
And so, instead of being too concerned with dwelling on bad events, or wondering about the reoccurrence of good ones in the new year, what we might accomplish or feel or win or fail at, maybe at the end of a year, we could question our willingness to give it back.
I wouldn't give 2010 back. Not to anyone.
In depths of 2010's twenty-one and twenty-two year old confusion, uselessness, joyfulness, playfulness, rebelliousness, frivolity [threw that in there to break up the nesses], and impetuousness, I was never certain if things were going right, or wrong, or both. I can definitely say I know more.
That's a start.
Hello, 2011.
And let's be honest, I can spin out a post about 2010's events and feelings any which way, but I will see Joseph this year, in 2011 (to start, in 25 days!), more than once. Especially at this point in my life, I don't think it's unusual to think that that is the Best Thing Ever).
Reader Comments (7)
One would assume that if you were intimated by a dozen most-certain-to-be-listening women, you would be able to "go" without a jitter, it would flow easily. Surely you meant intimidated? Have you ever known anyone to be able to pee totally quietly? That's a blog post all of its own.
25 days!! :)
25 days! is right. Slowly but surely, we've chipped away at the countdown. I'm trying to maintain the calm before the storm of excitement for as long as possible so that I'm not in a million pieces when he gets here.
phew!
Well picked-up. That could of (ha!) been embarrassing!
more complicated and more simple- yes/!
that's life, ongoing.
hi :)
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