“My nuclear button is bigger than yours.”
Full of optimism for 2018.
Advertisements
Thought For The Day
5
Tag Archives: New Year
2018
2018. Let’s be cool.
New Year
Happy New Year X
New Year Half the world is hurting, turning its face to shadow. Moldering moments, kindle to flame, are undefined images, lost to a cold, northwesterly wind, licking at the edges where the numbness fades. Firs stand conspicuous among their naked cousins, all tendenous needles and cadaverous cones. The sky is leaden. The streets are all unchartered lanes. An unknown bird calls out this new day; this new year. Everything is redeemable. ©AndrewJamesMurray
On A Wistful New Year’s Day
Thought I would share this from last year’s New Year’s Day. I started this year much as I did in 2016: having a brew stood on the step, watching the rain and a gliding gull overhead. But last year I went on to make a sad discovery in the local woods.
I sat outside in the back garden with a hot cup of tea, coat fastened, watching the milky coming of dawn. I can do this as I don’t drink these days, my New Year’s Day vigil no longer debilitated by the night before.
All of the neighbouring houses were in darkness, the windows dark, sightless eyes. There was no sign of life at all. Human life, that is.
The morning was scored by the constant rattle of a magpie, hidden from view. They nest in a huge tree beyond one of the houses, but the tree appeared bare, empty both of leaves and birds.
The call went on. Perhaps the chatter-rattle was bird-talk for come on-it’s morning!
In the spring and summer I plant flowers for the birds and bees, then switch my allegiance to the birds in autumn and winter, putting out food at dawn and dusk. I hadn’t…
View original post 669 more words
New Year In Song
Three new year-themed songs to ease your way into 2017. An official video from Abba; a song from Jeff Buckley; a live performance from U2. Take your pick.
Happy New Year Jackdaw followers and visitors.
New Year Carvery
You know, things go on. The world still turns, the seasons follow their customary order, stretching ahead from those first, unwitnessed moments. It is man’s tendency to carve time up into chunks, allot measures and names and meaning. Apparently this is the year of the monkey. But only until the portion we call January 28th, for then it becomes the year of the rooster.
I’ve even heard that this year we are adding an extra second-a leap second, to compensate for a slowdown in the Earth’s rotation. That’s going to cock the fireworks up, isn’t it?
I’m not sure if we make it up as we go along, I put my trust in the experts. Maybe we could add an hour-give everyone some extra drinking time?
The days are gone when I spend New Year’s Eve in a pub, congratulating everyone after the countdown with a firm handshake, a kiss, and “Another year closer to death.” But that’s just me-I temper it with a smile. But you guys know that, for you follow City Jackdaw.
But I will join in and welcome (after impatiently waiting that extra second) the carved segment that we will call 2017. And 2016: close the door on the way out.
Hope you all have a great New Year’s Eve, however you want to mark it.
See you on the flip side. Let the segment begin.
On A Wistful New Year’s Day
I sat outside in the back garden with a hot cup of tea, coat fastened, watching the milky coming of dawn. I can do this as I don’t drink these days, my New Year’s Day vigil no longer debilitated by the night before.
All of the neighbouring houses were in darkness, the windows dark, sightless eyes. There was no sign of life at all. Human life, that is.
The morning was scored by the constant rattle of a magpie, hidden from view. They nest in a huge tree beyond one of the houses, but the tree appeared bare, empty both of leaves and birds.
The call went on. Perhaps the chatter-rattle was bird-talk for come on-it’s morning!
In the spring and summer I plant flowers for the birds and bees, then switch my allegiance to the birds in autumn and winter, putting out food at dawn and dusk. I hadn’t yet filled their tray with muesli. Maybe this was my reminder.
All of a sudden, besides the sound of the invisible magpie, I could hear the voices of young people returning home from what must have been an all-nighter, no doubt weary but still on a high.
I thought of one of the poems in my book, the aptly titled: New Year, Morning. It begins:
Half the world is hurting,
turning its face to shadow.
I was referring to people being hungover from the night before, but a reader took it as a reference to the state of the world as it exists at this time, with events in the Middle East and Paris, etc, at the forefront of her thinking.
But that fits too. I’m cool with that.
A flock of crows, a murder of crows, wheeled overhead, calling, cawing, as they followed each other around and around. The hidden magpie suddenly came into view, alighting on a television aerial, agitated, its rattle now of a higher and more urgent pitch.
The morning was lightening; the world was awakening. The year had begun.
There was opportunity and optimism. My poem ends with the line:
‘Everything is redeemable.’
I do believe that.
*
In the afternoon I went for a walk in the local woods. After the Christmas festivities I felt the need to get out, to connect, to blow away the cobwebs. I walked along the river, the path turned muddy by the week’s incessant rain. There was not a lot of people about-and no children at all. No doubt they were all indoors, absorbed still by their new toys and such.
I came across a couple of dog walkers who nodded a greeting as they passed with their eager companions. I began to think of my dog, lost the year before, and my mood became, if not morose, a little wistful.
I left the path, seeking the more hidden and wilder tracks through the naked trees. Life slumbered, the afternoon still and grey.
In the distance something caught my eye, it looked like a plastic bag, wrapped around a stump at the base of a tall tree. It reminded me of the tap in my garden after I had lagged it against the winter freeze with an ad hoc combination of tea towels, carrier bags and string.
I made my way towards it, drawn by the defined shape among the wet-mulch collage of leaves, and soon the identity of the object became clear. It was the ditched remnant of a Chinese lantern, no doubt sent up to the skies at midnight last night. It couldn’t have made it too far as most of it was still intact. There was a message scrawled on the side in black ink. As only a little of the paper material had been burned away, I was able to decipher it:
To Tim, Nanna, Baby Andrew,
always in our thoughts, never forgotten,
always by us,
step by step,
arm in arm.
Lots of love, John
Kiss-Kiss
xxxx
I hunched low on the foilage-littered ground, saddened, reading it again. My eyes lingered upon ‘Baby Andrew.’
This is a new year; a new start. But we never fully come into it with a blank slate. We bring with us all of our experiences, our hurts and our joys. The past is ever present in the entirety of the life lessons that make us who we are.
I let go of the rim of the lantern, it gently resting again against the stump of the tree. I stood and moved on through a gathering of birch trees, spying a nuthatch, (I think the very first nuthatch I had ever seen), before it darted from view.
I don’t know why, but, before I descended a slight decline in the landscape, I turned for one last look at the husk of the lantern. From that distance it seemed that a light breeze was reinflating it where it rested, as though offering a final promise of flight.
