In the New Year

January 1, 2012

Gray and yellow morning, healthy chill in the house. Half the invitees did not show for my dinner party last night, but four of us were convivial and reached the new year in peace and friendship. A few rooms away, the dishwasher hums through the second-to-last clean-up load. Uneaten rolls strew the front yard, waiting for the delectation of the crows.

Somebody on the radio this morning was saying, “when we die, we are going to have to face God and account for every legitimate pleasure we denied ourselves.” Loved that. Going to twist it around and make it my motto for the year. Fear accounting to God why we shrugged off pleasures He sent us, how we presume to be holier, purer than He Himself. He set the table and we did not come. He stands there under the half moon scraping the garbage into the bin, wondering where we were, why we didn’t even call.

Purple windflower persists now as evening becomes full night, the moon like a ladle of cold fire in the south.

L invited me to a movie, and I went, seeking to set a social paradigm for the ensuing year. We saw War Horse. I don’t know the original book, but the film is different from the play in that every time Spielberg can inject gratuitous sentimentality, he does. Ruskin would have used Spielberg as an exemplar of pathetic fallacy, had he seen him coming from afar. Those things calculated to make the audience say “ahhh!” are precisely the things which violate both plausibility and human nature. But it is often a powerful film, and I struggled not to sob out loud, even though (or perhaps because) I knew what was coming. I appreciate how it allows the Germans to remain fully human. It makes France look like the most beautiful place in the world. Maybe it is.

The task I set myself to write a sonnet a day through December was accomplished.