Another year has come and gone. Where do the years go?! 2009, I hardly knew ye.
But it was a good decade. In the last ten years, I met the love of my life. I graduated from college. I worked as a passenger assistant for Iberia Airlines, a VIP club attendant, a legal secretary, a middle school teacher, and a high school teacher. I started writing again. I began blogging. I traveled to Los Angeles, Panama, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Segovia, Malaga, and Tokyo. I got my first cat. I rode my first roller coaster (and liked it!).
There were bad things that happened, too. I lost a grandfather. I almost lost my mother to a heart attack (she's okay now, thank goodness). I drifted apart from all my high school friends. My boyfriend lost a grandfather, an uncle, and his beloved dog Rocky. But for all the sad things, all the losses we've experienced, I cannot help but feel blessed at the end of this decade, because when I weigh both the good and the bad times in my mind, I realize how much the good outweighs the bad. This is something I forget too often -- I become too focused on the bad to realize how much goodness there is in my life.
What will the next decade bring? I am excited to find out. In so many ways the past ten years feel like they went by in a blur. It reminds me of that W.H. Auden poem that Ethan Hawkes' character recites in "Before Sunrise" --
"The years shall run like rabbits." And they
do run like rabbits, always just out of reach. Well, I'm going to do my hardest to keep up with them in the next ten years. I don't want to feel like my life is running away from me, but rather that I'm keeping in step with it.
"As I Walked Out One Evening"
by W. H. Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
Le boyf and I on New Year's Eve.
Picture was "polaroidized" courtesy of Poladroid.net.
