Happy New Year, 2023 edition!
This post has been a long time coming. About 2 1/2 years, actually. It is that long since I felt the COVID-19 pandemic justified a pause in posting. The pandemic was changing — itself and everything else too — so rapidly, it seemed that anything I might post would be not just potentially out of sync with reality, it might actually clash with the tragedies all around us.
New Year’s 2021 and New Year’s 2022 passed and so many of us seemed to still be waiting to get on with life. Maybe we still are, at least in part.
However, though no one can say COVID is gone, we are now in a figure-out-how-to-live-in-a-new-world mode. And getting on with life includes getting on with posts here.
So, let me say once again, Happy New Year 2023!
While there may be fewer large celebrations than in the past, we haven’t quite given up on the idea of celebration — food, family, party streamers, confetti…
Which is not how our family celebrated New Year’s Eve 2023. We celebrated with football on tv & crab cakes & Prosecco. Which might seem less festive than confetti & noisemakers but definitely cuts down on the post-party clean up required.
It has been a gloomy start to the year, weather-wise. Fog and gray…blecch. But sometimes you get a surprise amidst the dark.
To that thought I offer this New Year 2023 haiku:
a murder of crows, a skulk of foxes
gloom of a year’s first day–
then flocks a confetti of fireflies
Yes, I know that this haiku doesn’t follow the 5-7-5 syllable pattern. You were probably trained in school to expect that sound sequence. However, it isn’t a hard and fast requirement in English (or any other language). Syllables can be a stand in for the traditional Japanese sound units–but they remain a substitute, and sometimes a poor substitute. So, as far as I am concerned, we can opt out as needed. If you’d like more in-depth background and discussion on this concept, check out this link from the National Haiku Writing Month site.
Confetti refuses to be contained to a given space anyway–am I right?
In the end, memories matter more than the date or the year. So, Happy New Year! May yours be filled with a confetti of fireflies! Or just confetti. Or whatever you need to make your celebrations memorable!