01-25: then help me with the crossword in the mornings

Both solar and lunar new year took place in January this year. Two new years celebrations attempting to cleanly demarcate two new beginnings during a time in my life that is perhaps already too full of new beginnings to begin with. My heart is expanding exponentially as the corners of my life-as-I-knew-it are spilling over the edge. Some days, it feels overwhelming. All this newness. All this growth.

Eleven of us crowded over a collage of tables to toss the 魚生 prosperity salad during lunar new year eve. The higher (and messier) you toss, the higher your luck and prosperity will be in the coming year. In addition to each upside down 福 I stuck atop every doorframe in our apartment, I feel like we need all the luck we can get this year.

This tangle of orange carrot, white daikon, light green cucumber, pink pickled ginger, coral salmon, and golden fried wonton skins flung around the table as laughter bounced around the living room. Red packets stuffed with a puzzle of a collage were opened and matches were found —

An excerpt from this year’s selection of lunar new year poems:

6.
Look, I want to love this world
as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.

— from October by Mary Oliver

For Laura’s birthday, she requested everyone to bring a poem to share.

I brought Snow Geese by Mary Oliver, a poem I spent this entire month reading and rereading and reciting aloud, whenever I needed a bit of comfort, or whenever I needed a shorthand to describe how it is I’ve been feeling lately.

Oh to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was

a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun

so they were, in part at least, golden. I

held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us

as with a match
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,

but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.

The geese
flew on.
I have never
seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

Someone else brought a Janelle Monáe song/poem generator. It was kind of Mad Libs style, with pastel paper cutouts of groups of nouns and verbs pulled from select Janelle Monáe songs (the only ones I remember are Mushrooms and Roses and Lipstick Lover, which if you know Laura, makes total and complete sense).

Here was mine:

come sweet love / something like a terminator / here they fall into her love and never have to hide / calling you to dinner / i fight for what i believe

We celebrated Tanya’s birthday four days after that. On the commute back home, I snapped a few quick pics of this sunset and spent the rest of the train ride from Coquitlam to Vancouver just marvelling at the view.

Each orange sliver of the setting sun seeped out into the pinky-purple clouds, much deeper pink and purple in my eyes than my phone could capture. In the intense sear of the sky, every other colour dissipated into the background. Trees blend into buildings blend into train windowpanes as all I could see were a flurry of my favourite colours.

Late one night, on a different commute home, I was waiting for my ride when I was met with a goodnight, love you, text me when you get back home — which is maybe just three different ways of saying I love you.

I think that’s the biggest gift the previous year of heartache gave me: each reunion with a friend, each serendipitous meeting, feels like a moment worthy of grand celebration now. And I will take any excuse to celebrate.

Even my reunion with my beloved Costco hotdog was revelatory.

I am trying to celebrate all the newness in my life with curiosity, instead of my usual knee-jerk reaction of apprehension and anxiety.

The anxiety doesn’t always go away, but I’ll keep trying.

During our last dramaturgy session, Erika brought a deck of angel cards and this was the word I pulled:

Commitment. In tandem with the newness entering my life, all the growth, and the inevitable change that comes with it, commitment feels like an apt word to bring into the new year. Commitment — to the bit, to big love, to everyday celebration.

I spied this vivid, perfect flame red square out of the corner of my eye right before I had to cross the street. I paused. I celebrated! This fire, this energy, in the centre of my worldview that’s crowded with greens and pebbled greys and barren brown branches — wow — contrasted with that sliver of chartreuse from the upper right corner — wow!! wow!! — truly brought a zing to my step.

I like the red smudge on the speckled ashy-charcoal concrete wall too — what do you think happened here? An accident? Before or after the red was painted? They almost seem in conversation with one another! What do you think they’re talking about!!

Even the billow of orange tarps on a construction site bellow out in harmony, dancing brightly against the cloudless expanse of blue. Their corners flapping high, as if to say hi to us as we walked to a restaurant to get a salmon sushi set (also orange!).

The conversations colours have around me fills my heart and mind with endless wonder. Achieving a balance in the conversation — the composition — and never shutting up about it is probably my life’s work. And yet — is it really work if the impulse feels as natural as telling someone I love you?

And yet — most times, the light has more profound things to say than what I could possibly convey. But I’ll keep trying. Like how a reflection catches a glimpse of something beautiful and creates brilliance in a totally new way. I can’t be the sunset, but maybe I can be the psychedelic 1970s light patterns made up by the reflection of the sunset, you know?