The country is marching, rumbling, and stumbling toward the end of the year, which will close out following some traditional celebrations. Some people will sit down to review the year and assess successes and lament failures. Not one of us can say that the year 2024 gave us everything that we wanted, and little that we did not. But we continue to strive, to reach for the next rung on the ladder to, if not outright joy, at least, contentment. But the passage of time is inevitable, and we should strive to make the most of our time in the year. As Irvington’s Harmony Collected Community Choir sang on Nov. 10, there are five hundred, twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes in a year, and asked as well as answered “how do you measure a year in the life?”
With apologies to Jonathan Larson and Roger Emerson, who wrote and arranged “Seasons Of Love” for the Broadway musical “Rent,” we can measure it in “truth that (we) learned,” and in “bridges (we) burned,” and in this past year, there were many truths learned and many bridges burned. Of course, as my American Heritage Dictionary defines it, “truth” is “Conformity to fact or actuality,” and “Fidelity to an original or standard,” and there have been some animated discussions about “originals” and “standards.” Every one of us has, at some time, burned a bridge, and some of us have learned from that mistake; some of us have merely learned that bridges can be burnt, and we stand on the bank of the river and marvel at the conflagration.
Two pairs of my good friends suffered a fracture in their relationships and are still estranged; couples who used to share joy are now four individuals who have passed the year without the pleasure of each other’s company. I am in contact with three of the four, and there are awkward moments when some event that we had attended together comes up in our reminiscences. I am unable to fix those fractures and lament the passage of the time when we would, as Larson wrote, “celebrate, (and) remember a year in the life of friends.”
In January 2013, I wrote for this publication a column called “Resolution Number 8.” My editor had written New Year’s resolutions at the end of 2011, and she resolved for 2012 to “write more poems.” She inspired me to do the same, but my commitment to the craft passes through stages, and time is stomping on my production. But in the detritus left by my passage through this life, one will find poems that I have written during many of the five hundred twenty-five thousand, six-hundred minutes I have spent clinging to the blue marble. I was looking for a specific notebook recently (I have 9,577 of them) and found one that had an unfinished poem in it, a poem that recorded my awe and wonder on the passage through a moment. On a social networking site, I once described myself as a “parent, poet and pool player.” I am still all 3, though my skill level in each of them can be a point of contention for those measuring my contributions.
Many of us are frantically galloping toward holiday celebrations and the joyful and anxious anticipation of sharing with friends and family our love and happiness. (Thanks, Al Green.) The year passes, always, and of all the ways that we can measure it, as I have sung in “Seasons Of Love,” I think we should “remember the love,” not the anger, and each year, “measure in love.”
Measure in love.
cjon3acd@att.net