It is night, and quiet. I am at home, typing while reminiscing. Tonight, is New Year's Eve, and tomorrow - nay, in a little under 3 hours (local time), a new year will commence. Instead of 2016, we will be dating all our documents as 2017. I sit, type and remember what I have done in such nights in the past years.
Last year, I was a friend's house in the south of England. Half of the party was in the hot tub, while others like myself chose rather to curl up in the living room. I felt blessed and observant, as ever surprised at the choices we all have yet often don't realise. The Hot Tub New Year's had come up suddenly, and I had decided to join these people whose hearts I knew but their lives a bit less so. The First Day of the Year saw us walking to the sea in gusty wind and smattering rain, joyous and full of life.
Other years, I have spent the celebration with other friends at other parties, other homes, other countries. Once, I was in Vienna for the fabulous Silvesterkonzert. There, we shared our tickets with an elderly couple who were celebrating long years together but had had no tickets. Another year, I was in a farm in a Welsh valley, quiet and in the single company of my then partner. Often, back in the day, I would stay in with family, have a meal and go to bed after seeing the change on TV.
The places and company have changed; the celebrations too - I haven't had the Spanish traditional 12 grapes for luck in a while, for example; and the gatherings I have been to range from quiet 'friends and family' parties, to pub bashes, to sleepovers, to the humongous last free New Year's on the Embankment in London. Now, today, in Israel, it is the quiet of home to heal my throat.
What really makes me think is the need to celebrate, year after year, the change in the calendar.
I get the need to mark time, to celebrate stages in the wheel of the year. However, unlike Pagan Sabbaths (for example) which are linked to major lunar or natural events, the Georgian calendar we celebrate now, the one with numbers, is rather... random. Why today, why at midnight? Why do we have 365/366 day years, why 7-day weeks, why 24 hour days? And yet, the expectation feels us with both the thrill of anticipation, and the dread of mortality. We feel bad, we vow to change, we join to eat, drink, dance; exult in excesses; relish the madness of the fallacy of turning the page.
It's this conflicting awareness that keeps me interested, if I'm honest. This collective, world-wide agreement to unite in joy while closing a cycle. The agreement that it matters, that it has power, that we are somehow defined by the number on the date. Because, after all, and like they say in Hebrew, תמיד יש סיבה למסיבה (There's always a reason to party), and that's what really matters. And because closing a year means a new one, brand new and mistake free, is up for us to play in, mess up in, hopefully grow in. And, most importantly, because it's the chance to love, laugh, live.
Blessings for the next 365 days, my dears! May the abstract of 2017 be a true blank canvas, and may you be brave and paint it in bold colours to create a life whose experience you love. Into the New Year we go!
Saturday 31 December 2016
Wednesday 12 October 2016
12 Octubre / 12th October / י׳ תשרי
This 12th October, 2016 is a fabulous parallel to the conflicts I find within my identity.
On the one hand, today is Yom Kippur - Day of Atonement. Observant Jews, and many secular ones as well, have been fasting since yesterday afternoon. It is 26 hours of no food, drink (even water), smoking, driving, fun... It is the time to reconsider the last year, become aware of one's mistakes and wherever we may have injured others; a time of honest soul-searching whilst hoping that God will consider us worthy of being in the book of life for another year.
Here, in Israel, the country is at a standstill - there are no cars on the roads, no radio or television broadcasts, no open businesses, no music, no groups of people sharing a fag. Not only are many people fasting, but the whole nation is remembering also the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that was both psychologically and politically decisive for the country and the world at large.
In Spain, where I was born and raised, today is a national holiday - 12th October is known as Día de la Hispanidad, when they celebrate the arrival of the Castilian caravels to the American coasts. In Spain, it is a day of pride, whereas in the Americas, where it is know as Columbus Day or Día de la Raza, it is seen as a day of mourning, prelude to genocide and loss of identities, communities and lives.
In Zaragoza, the specific city where I was raised, it is El Día de la Virgen del Pilar. It is the feast day in honour of Our Lady of the Pilar, patroness & protector of Zaragoza, and by extension, of all of Spain and the Hispanic peoples. Back there, the festivities last a full week - music, street parties, drinking, animal torture, carousing, and La Ofrenda de Flores: a celebration of Catholic faith, tradition and colour.
And I am all of these and all of that. Being in some sense of each and every tradition, I have to find a balance between them, create a myth that can encompass all my parts, define a new whole. Aware that it is all made up, that really all tradition is but a common celebration to identify the self as part of a group, I have to acknowledge and accept my group-less-ness. Like my surname, I am a hyphenation of identities; a construct of heritages I choose to carry along and self-define by.
Some sections of those pasts and societies I take pride in, some less so. Similarly, I often find myself having to justify one aspect of myself to another, as none completely comply, leaving behind a residue of anger and guilt, tempered by honesty and faith.
More and more people, I find, are like me. Growing numbers of humans whose histories, and/or those of their parents, families, friends, have grown so far beyond the boundaries of nation, religion, education or media that they have had to birth themselves new identities, new truths, new definitions. Some do so by opposition to the old, some by association to the new, some by constant doubt.
I aim for balance.
Every day, like a good cook, I produce a new recipe of me; every day, the ingredients and spices are a bit different. Yet, day by day, I nurture my self, my truth, with action rather than reaction. Because I am part of all these traditions and aspect, and I choose to remain part, and not apart.
One, singular, unique; One, always part.
On the one hand, today is Yom Kippur - Day of Atonement. Observant Jews, and many secular ones as well, have been fasting since yesterday afternoon. It is 26 hours of no food, drink (even water), smoking, driving, fun... It is the time to reconsider the last year, become aware of one's mistakes and wherever we may have injured others; a time of honest soul-searching whilst hoping that God will consider us worthy of being in the book of life for another year.
Here, in Israel, the country is at a standstill - there are no cars on the roads, no radio or television broadcasts, no open businesses, no music, no groups of people sharing a fag. Not only are many people fasting, but the whole nation is remembering also the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that was both psychologically and politically decisive for the country and the world at large.
In Spain, where I was born and raised, today is a national holiday - 12th October is known as Día de la Hispanidad, when they celebrate the arrival of the Castilian caravels to the American coasts. In Spain, it is a day of pride, whereas in the Americas, where it is know as Columbus Day or Día de la Raza, it is seen as a day of mourning, prelude to genocide and loss of identities, communities and lives.
In Zaragoza, the specific city where I was raised, it is El Día de la Virgen del Pilar. It is the feast day in honour of Our Lady of the Pilar, patroness & protector of Zaragoza, and by extension, of all of Spain and the Hispanic peoples. Back there, the festivities last a full week - music, street parties, drinking, animal torture, carousing, and La Ofrenda de Flores: a celebration of Catholic faith, tradition and colour.
And I am all of these and all of that. Being in some sense of each and every tradition, I have to find a balance between them, create a myth that can encompass all my parts, define a new whole. Aware that it is all made up, that really all tradition is but a common celebration to identify the self as part of a group, I have to acknowledge and accept my group-less-ness. Like my surname, I am a hyphenation of identities; a construct of heritages I choose to carry along and self-define by.
Some sections of those pasts and societies I take pride in, some less so. Similarly, I often find myself having to justify one aspect of myself to another, as none completely comply, leaving behind a residue of anger and guilt, tempered by honesty and faith.
More and more people, I find, are like me. Growing numbers of humans whose histories, and/or those of their parents, families, friends, have grown so far beyond the boundaries of nation, religion, education or media that they have had to birth themselves new identities, new truths, new definitions. Some do so by opposition to the old, some by association to the new, some by constant doubt.
I aim for balance.
Every day, like a good cook, I produce a new recipe of me; every day, the ingredients and spices are a bit different. Yet, day by day, I nurture my self, my truth, with action rather than reaction. Because I am part of all these traditions and aspect, and I choose to remain part, and not apart.
One, singular, unique; One, always part.
Sunday 29 May 2016
Return
Time has seemingly just passed. It did not give advance notice, late apologies, or even a half-hearted hand wave. So, a year and a half has slipped by, and I wonder why I let it happen; why I did not make a record of me, of it, of all those people and events around me.
I can feel my fingertips clumsily caress the keyboard, having to retype again and again, trying to unravel the confusion of long silence. Thoughts are not things, right now, but rather elusive shadows which I struggle to individualise. Maybe, if I were an ornithologist I would be more successful at it, with the added expertise of identifying one single song among the cacophony of a jungle canopy. Be that as it may, shortcomings or apprehension aside, I sit at my computer and chose to climb back to the peak of my mountain, ready to yodel away.
Silence, like time, is a curious estate to be in. Some people merely feel awkward when facing silence; some others feel lost in the border-less expanse of nothing opened up by silence; yet others crawl into that space as into a cocoon from the outside. I, however, fall to a fourth group, that of those who redirect their silence into a practice so that by the time they are floating in it, they can justify it. We are the ones that are most delusional about silence, so much so that we are the most scared once we notice that we're not able to feel the ground under.
That, I guess, is where I got. That, I know, is what I have swam my way back from. Sure, in the meantime I have crossed some mayor thresholds I probably would not have even looked at while on dry ground. For that, I am grateful. I am grateful for my own resilience, my own dedication to living, a dedication nurtured slowly, steadily, at times more by rota than awareness.
The top of the mountain, unlike the middle of the sea, is tough to reach. The top, however, gives you the joy of a panoramic vision only usually the prerogative of eagles. But then, maybe my song is not that of the tropical birds, rather the cry that echoes through the peaks.
It is good to hear my voice again.
I can feel my fingertips clumsily caress the keyboard, having to retype again and again, trying to unravel the confusion of long silence. Thoughts are not things, right now, but rather elusive shadows which I struggle to individualise. Maybe, if I were an ornithologist I would be more successful at it, with the added expertise of identifying one single song among the cacophony of a jungle canopy. Be that as it may, shortcomings or apprehension aside, I sit at my computer and chose to climb back to the peak of my mountain, ready to yodel away.
Silence, like time, is a curious estate to be in. Some people merely feel awkward when facing silence; some others feel lost in the border-less expanse of nothing opened up by silence; yet others crawl into that space as into a cocoon from the outside. I, however, fall to a fourth group, that of those who redirect their silence into a practice so that by the time they are floating in it, they can justify it. We are the ones that are most delusional about silence, so much so that we are the most scared once we notice that we're not able to feel the ground under.
That, I guess, is where I got. That, I know, is what I have swam my way back from. Sure, in the meantime I have crossed some mayor thresholds I probably would not have even looked at while on dry ground. For that, I am grateful. I am grateful for my own resilience, my own dedication to living, a dedication nurtured slowly, steadily, at times more by rota than awareness.
The top of the mountain, unlike the middle of the sea, is tough to reach. The top, however, gives you the joy of a panoramic vision only usually the prerogative of eagles. But then, maybe my song is not that of the tropical birds, rather the cry that echoes through the peaks.
It is good to hear my voice again.
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