I pushed through the end of 2009, determined to, among other things, finish Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, grateful for the structure and expansion of topics it offered for my annual ritual of end-of-the-year stock-taking.
And then, in a second, 2009 was over. In spite the "Happy New Year"s and noisemakers and horns and kisses and toasts and resolutions, 2010 doesn't seem to have begun.
The calendar's Friday New Years Day gave me a long weekend to spend almost completely at home. I've gone out only for a couple of meals with family and friends. I collaged, wrote poetry, read, brainstormed plans without coming to conclusions or answers, slowed way down, kept no schedule.
Spiritual traditions have names for time and place in between life and death: limbo, barzakh, bardo, to name a few--but what do you call being between years when the new year has started but you haven't joined it? I'm still in between the years, in flux, in the interstices, liminal. But even though I'm on the border, I'm looking ahead, making preparations, laying groundwork for what's ahead.
