So This Is The New Year

So This Is The New Year
Dane La Born

Dane La Born

There’s a song by Death Cab For Cutie I listen to every January 1st. The first line is “So this is the new year/and I don’t feel any different.”

It feels especially pertinent headed in the first days of 2017, though for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

By all accounts, the coming year will be one for the record books. Between the Twitter-addicted toddler-in-chief, his Nazi acolytes, a country so deeply divided on so many fundamental levels, people dying and live-tweeting as they do — it’s an absurd notion to think this year is going to be anything but f—ked.

Yet, here I sit, day to day, going through the motions. My motions are utterly mundane. I wake up, maybe write, watch something to distract myself, play a video game to do the same. I walk my dogs, I care for my animals better than I care for myself half the time. Just getting the will to get out of bed, do laundry, clean the dishes, take a bloody shower — it all feels like a pointless chore, and I don’t know that I could hate it anymore. The feeling, that is.

It’s a tough thing to know what’s wrong and not be able to do anything about it. What can one do with a world that encourages melancholy the way it does. Everywhere you look, something horrible is happening. And if you’re anything like me, it’s like you can feel every ounce of pain, of sorrow and hate and rage and all of these stupid, overwhelming emotions. It’s a flood, one that is nearly impossible to stem.

So what can I do but try and try again. To find the beauty, to find the point of this world. I see glimpses of it, when I see my lady sleeping, or wake up to hyper dogs that make it impossible not to smile. Foggy nights and mornings and the smell of dust after the rain. Tiny things. Things that help as much as they can.

Petrichor. That’s the word for smell of dust after it rains. Apologies, that’s just a fantastic word.

I know I’m scared of what’s coming, and that doesn’t help. But as is usual, I have to power through. No giving up.

Petrichor.

It really does conjure something beautiful.

Categories: Commentary