Rsolution

Tired Tree

Sometimes, by the last day of the year, I feel a bit like my Christmas tree... a little bedraggled, limbs weighted down and drooping, and the baubles that hung brightly and cheerfully at the beginning of the season now seem like they are trying too hard.  It is also true that we have given the season our best - we reached this state of bedraggle-ment by giving it our all.  And so, as the tree will be rejuvenated by being stuck in the snowbank outside tomorrow,  I will also experience a sense of rejuvenation through the time honored tradition of reflection and resolution.

A few days ago, I was hard at work in my studio drawing a full scale blueprint for a new fiber art piece for a client.  I was in that spot in the process that every artist knows...  how will this piece resolve?  Continuing on, that word was in the forefront of my mind.  By the end of the session, I could see where and how resolution would occur.  With this knowledge came a sigh of relief and flood of happiness.  I now knew where I was going with this work. There is a kind of peace that comes with this knowledge.

Journal Page

Writing in my journal this morning (a nearly daily ritual), I noticed I had - poetically - reached the last page of my current journal on the last day of the year.  Another type of resolution wherein a type of conclusion is reached.  This inspired me to look the word resolution up in my battered and beloved old Random House Dictionary.  I found that there are 18 definitions for this strong and useful word.  You can see that I jotted down abbreviated versions of each one in my journal.  It seemed a very fitting way to close out the year and my journal.

On this last day of the year, what will we decide was the resolving moment in the year past?  What will we determine to be our resolution for the coming year?  Will we feel a sense of peace when we attempt to resolve the past with the present and future for ourselves?  Or will we feel dissolution within our hearts?  Each of us defines this for ourselves.

I leave you this cold, clear and brilliant winter day with a segment of a poem sent to me by a dear friend:

I broider my life into the frame,

I broider my love, thread upon thread;

The world goes by with its glory and shame,

Crowns are bartered and blood is shed;

I sit and broider my dreams instead.

- Arthur Symons

Payette River, McCall, Idaho