Heredity

(Mary Casey is my name and with
my needle wrought, silk on linen
needlework sample, believed to be
from Newport, Rhode Island, circa
1763)

Our present is informed by many things, including our own past and the past of our family over many generations.

“A man’s Self is the sum total of all the he can call his,” wrote William James, “not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank account.” ~ from The Principles of Psychology

HEREDITY

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance — that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.

~ Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), English novelist and poet

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Burning the Old Year

(Abstracto, 1935 by Joan Miró, 1893-1983,
Spanish painter, ceramist, and sculptor)

Today it’s out with the old habits, in with the new resolutions.

“[I]n the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelope your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.” ~ William James (1842-1910), American psychologist and philosopher

BURNING THE OLD YEAR

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye, born 1952, American poet

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