MARKING TIME
We humans have made an obsessive habit out of marking various points when this elemental lump we live on has completed another revolution around the big fiery ball, don't we? Because that's all any kind of anniversary is, when reduced to basics. Birthday? You've stayed alive for another circuit of the sun. Wedding anniversary? We've managed another circuit and we're still together. Marking x years since some event that 'matters' to you? That's x turns of the merry-go-round since the event took place. Everything else is all about what we've chosen the event to mean.
It's all very artificial, and also very comforting. We need our rituals, our marker points, our certainties, our ways of making sense of the world. I'm no different. I'll say Happy New Year with the best of them. Although then it's a time of year when there is some real grounding to the marking of the passage of another loop of the solar system. It's the time of the Winter Solstice, the real, primeval, driver behind this time of celebrations. The short days are departing, and our world begins to become lighter again.
Of course that only makes any sense in the northern hemisphere of the planet, and the northerly section of that area. It should be the complete opposite on the other side of the world. Yet that's not the case. Because the bulk of the world was colonised, subjugated, massacred and exploited by the peoples of the north, and this is one of their legacies. It appears to be unifying. But it shouldn't.
So we start a new year, and try to makes ourselves into new people with our resolutions - the promises we know will soon be broken. I didn't even bother this time around, other than acknowledging I need to get out more and meet different people - my circle of acquaintance is too narrowly circumscribed for comfort. But there's no beginning to that yet - I still feel as lousy with this persistent cough as I did before Xmas, so socialising isn't much in mind for now. The highlights have been there though. Making the effort to go to St Giles on Monday and see the mighty Lau in action, guaranteed to induce a grin. Yesterday meant a trip to the rink (the cold dry air is good for an aching throat) and the euphoria of watching Caps beat title rivals Aberdeen, and beat them surprisingly well by eight goals to two, to go top of the league. Which only matters because... I attach meaning to a random group of guys all wearing the same outfit, and trying to score more goals that some differently outfitted guys. We're just monkeys really, aren't we?
