Much as I’m drawn to wondering what lies ahead, guessing, inferring and even betting on probabilities, am I in danger of defining-by-divining? It’s easy to get so immersed in the practice of my prognostications that I start to believe in them as the appointed future and let them become my default reality. What a pity if by over-enthusiastic crystal gazing and navel gazing and pseudo-scientific extrapolations I manage to constrain my life to what I expect it to be rather than letting it unfold and taking full advantage of what I’m able to create out of those things with which life presents me as I roll along.
Candling eggs and reading ultrasounds of one’s innards and charting historic patterns–divination by trusted means–that’s all well and good, but only as a thought-provoking guide for what may be, and after all, if I don’t like the sound of the predictors, why on earth should I sit around and mope instead of defying the gravity of the situation! If I am to have any true resolutions for the future–the new year now unfolding or indeed, anything more than that–I’d like to think they will be about living that future in full, about being present in my present as it comes. I hope to be sometimes engulfed in the sweep of current life and sometimes embracing the immense and bracing Possible contained in every living moment with openness and imagination, hanging on for truly dear life. Let me dare to be fully, wildly, passionately alive while I live and not entangle in what-ifs more than is actually useful.
Everything we do with our days and with our hearts and minds and skills and nerve can be spent on worrying and wondering, if we take ourselves and our powers of prediction and over whatever mysteries lie in wait too seriously. Or there can be enormously exhilarating challenges and opportunities and blessings blooming in abundance, scattered around and waiting for recognition and engagement. I hope that I am growing wise enough at long last to let go of fear and inhibition and the fungus of fatalism encroaching on assumptions of a fixed and implacable future, to instead spend much more of myself on the kind of work and action and play that happen gladly in the moment of their discovery. Time, I say, to get moving and try those wings.
Art-Colored Glasses
Original poetry, essays, artworks, photographs & musings on whatever moves me…
Art-Colored Glasses 
I call it paralysis by analysis.. and you and I don’t have it! happy New Year darling! c
I’m going to steal this, if you don’t mind…best I’ve heard! 😉
Yeah, that Celi, always one with the cool phraseology. 😀
No, we have something itchier that makes us too curious to settle down quite. Maybe there’s a topical ointment for it? Happy 2012 yourself, Beautiful!
We’ll never figure out if we can fly if we don’t first find something high from which to jump, right? Fly ON, sweet lady! And Happy New Year!
After all, part of the exhilaration is from the insanely possible crashing and the great amazement in mostly avoiding it!! All things outstanding be yours in 2012 too!
May you soar to whatever heights you aspire to in 2012.
And you as well, lovely friend! I hear the air becomes quite refined at higher elevations! 🙂
I sense peace, contentment, and happiness in your future. Hope I have it in mine too.
Happy New Year. May 2012 only be better than every year that came before.
I couldn’t wish you anything more potent and beautiful than what you just wished me, so I will simply say, Same to YOU! With hugs.
My! From where I sit, you look perched and abundantly ready for flight. May it be an exhilarating one!
Just taking that plunge is pretty exhilarating; the success of the flight is a bonus! Thank you, Antoinette, and may your 2012 be full of flights of fancy!
happy new year kathryn……may the year 2012 brings joy, good health and prosperity to you!!!!
And to you and your lovely family, Nors! It’s starting off with a gorgeous sunny day here–no complaints at all!
You are an odds on favorite to flow in the moment and move with the groove too. Enjoy.
Since I appear to be genetically incapable of dancing groovily (too Norwegian?), I’ll take it as a challenge to find ways to move with the groove however else I am able. Thank you! And let me know if any tangoing transpires in your land!
Happy New Year to you and your loved ones Kathryn, looking forward to moving along in this new year with you 🙂
I am hoping for and looking forward to a year filled with happiness and peace for you as well, and will very gladly make the journey together, Anyes! 🙂
When in doubt, I can always fly by the seat of my pants! Most excellent post, Miss Kathryn and quite thought provoking (as usual!). But the question foremost on my mind is the one that queries: How in the world do you have the artwork on hand the match your posts PERFECTLY?! I am in awe, really.
It’s really pretty easy–almost feels like cheating, since I figured out the process: if I have a storyline in mind, I fish through my archives until I have images that can be construed as suitable (and add tweaks via captions if necessary, to keep up the illusion); if I have images I want to use, I look through my poetry files to see if there’s anything that might remotely fit, and if not, use captions again to cheat them into relationship; if I haven’t any stuff at all that seems particularly companionable at the moment, why then I randomly choose a poem or half-baked essay or picture as a starting point and build at least semi-suited material of the other kind to support it. (And when all else fails, wander around friends’ posts looking for good ideas to start the motor.) So in other words, smoke and mirrors all ’round. If you look too closely, you’ll see the underwear peeking out of the Empress’s snazzy looking getup pretty much every time. So I thank you most heartily for this assurance that you are willing to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” and call me clever. 😀
Your archives are surely the richest in the land, Miss Kathryn!
Thanks for this gift, Kathryn, a perfect post for the New Year. I must admit, however, that I’ve never been much of a navel gazer, having been traumatized at an early age. My brother, who was 5 years my senior and about 10 years-old at the time, announced that he and 2 of our cousins “discovered” that one’s belly button made a perfect repository for salt when snacking on celery while in bed. Aside from keeping my navel fastidiously clean ever since, I’ve not spent much time gazing at it — and I’ve never looked at my brother in quite the same way either.
Man, you made me coin an acronym! SWUL (Snort with Unladylike Laughter)! And I won’t look at celery the same ever again, either!
Love this.
As children, my best friend and I were convinced that if we just ran fast enough, jumped high enough, and flapped hard enough, that flight was possible…
A little of that surety is welcome these days…
I once jumped down a flight of (carpeted, whew) stairs on that same theory. And I didn’t sustain even a scratch or bruise. Why not, I can’t imagine, but it only bolstered my unrealistic sense of possibility, so I’ve always been quite happy with the result! [Cue Sinatra singing ‘Come Fly with Me’] . . . 🙂
LOVE THIS POST! What a fabulous way to kick us in the backside and get us OUT THERE and ready to take on the New Year with wild abandon. Yes, I am not as poetic as you so that is the Geni-fied translation of this pots. Hope I have not offended. Have a very Happy New Year Katherine and I wish you all the wonderful and exciting things that is around the corner as we both jump out there and spread our wings.
Thank you! I’ll happily zoom around with you any time, Geni. You’re as poetic as they come in your presentations of kitchen wonders and family adventures, so I’m more than happy to have you as interpreter, fellow-traveler and delightful friend on both plots of blog-land!!
Hey, my child, this one requires contemplation. Mystified by the sketches. Will return for in depth consideration, thought and, hopefully, more than trite comments, as you are certainly worthy of more than just one little ole “Like” button click…
Lest you worry too much, I’d say if anyone makes too much sense out of my odder surrealist/absurdist drawings, then I’d worry about *them*!! 🙂
Topical ointments to cure what, your self-defined “surrealist/absurdist drawngs”? Don’t you dare, please. Sketching chickens balancing eggs and eyeing hawks approaching in the distance, eggs balancing atop pencils and encouraging your fellow bloggers to fly within the creative clouds, believing they can, indeed, fly within the creative clouds make you supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Keep flying high…
Okay, I’ll leave the good mental health to others better equipped to deal with it!!! 😀
Your first paragraph of this very interesting article could easily have been written by an enlightened stock market analyst who suddenly realises that she has locked herself into a future mindset to suit her own predictions. By the way I have written an exact prediction of where the stock market is going over the next 5 years. I will be publishing it in 5 years time. 😉
I await your prognostications with bated breath. (Please have some oxygen handy when you’re ready to reveal them.) 😉