Notes friends tied to the doorknob
"Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)
Dear Friends,
Thank you for being a part of this experiment of “writing down the bones,”1 or getting my lectures out into the world. There were 37 posts on this newsletter this year. That means I managed to actually get the writing done 70% of the time, which is much, much more that I had any right to expect. Ahem…you may have noticed that the storm of end-of-the-semester and holiday-prep has shuttled my best intentions the last three weeks, but I plan to drive this experiment a little bit further down the road in 2024.
What we’ve covered so far (all posts are available here).
Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
Although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want
His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary
34. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.
Men are like plants
a history that swallowed me.
The eyes of all people are upon us.
Let no man know is my Desire.
Among the ancients there were two worlds in existence
Tell me, what else should I have done?
I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order
Your conformity explains nothing.
Hope is THE thing with feathers
We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake
I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
Cold Water and a run in the fresh air before breakfast.
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.
Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy.
The Little One looked up into his mother's face in perfect faith.
The land belongs to the future.
don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun
The whole city was at the mercy of the mob
The melancholy of those black days have left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years
Before a hurricane, the animals that can, leave.
12. New eyes were given to him.
What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb?
It was the man who had been everything, and yet this person was nothing.
Now had I approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thick darkness whereof I was soon to disappear...
The only lasting truth is Change.
What is it then between us?
There was an uneasy cessation of all things.
While these internal revolutions were going on...
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks?
Because this alone is what a man who came away naked could carry out with him
There is a certain slant of light/Winter afternoons
Of the year, this post on Thoreau was the most read and shared (200X!), and Walden is also one of my favorites, so that was very satisfying:
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.
Not all readers make it to the end of Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), since a few dozen pages of snoozy meditations on masonry, quasi-Eastern philosophy, and pea shoots come between it and the famous lines about “living deliberately.” The short chapter entitled “Conclusions” is one of my favorites, and where I go for solace and wisdom.
I’ll have tons more good stuff to talk you about in the new year, and if there’s an American author you want to see pop up in the roster, please leave a comment. The comments are open for this post.
And I have another small favor to ask you. I don’t like the name of this newsletter. It was a quick and dirty set up and I’ve stuck with it, rather than overthink it. Let’s plan to come up with a new name in 2024. If you have a suggestion, let me know it. Naming is so hard.
I’ll leave you with this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952) a Palestinian American poet whose work spans several decades. 2 I had the benefit of seeing her read at Boston College (with our dear Sheila Sundar!) back in 2019. I usually hate poetry readings, but this one had an inspiring community meeting vibe. Most of the audience had her poems memorized and their lips moved along with her words.
In this poem, the speaker imagines placing the old year’s paper trail into the fire. I love this ritual of making a fresh opening for the new year:
“an absence shouts, celebrates, and leaves a space.”
Nathalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones is an excellent guide to getting your first draft of something done.
Maybe she felt she had to write a New Year’s poem with the last name Nye? Dad joke !
I’ll be back in the new year with a bunch of texts to share with you all. “Only the things I didn’t do/crackle after the blazing dies”: Beloved by Toni Morrison, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, shorts by W.E.B. du Bois and Charles Chesnutt, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and who knows what else. I’m hoping that you can 1) subscribe and share if you haven’t already and 2) offer up a text you’d like to see in the mix in 2024.
Here’s to peace in 2024.