New Year's Day (U2)

I admit to being a woo woo woo wee kinda person - there is not much I disbelieve, as there are so many things our brain does not/cannot process about the universe. I'm fine in accepting the fact some phenomena is just unexplainable - the mystery, in my opinion, makes it all the more powerful and intriguing. I don't have to have *proof* - I trust my intuition, even more so in the last decade...

A few nights ago I was packing away the Christmas CDs until next year, and ran across a mix that J (my co-worker who passed away mid-June) had made and given to another co-worker the prior Christmas, who then dubbed a copy for me - I hadn't had a chance to play it over the holidays, and was curious, given J's fun and eccentric taste in music and since there was no tracklist, as to exactly what he had included on his compilation.

When I began listening on my kitchen boombox, I broke into a broad grin - in the three months we worked together, most of our conversation revolved around our shared passion for music... and I recognized so many of his favorites represented: Cyndi Lauper, The Go Go's, Barbra. As I skipped from song to song, hearing about 30 seconds of each, I began to notice a very distinct change in the air in the room - it was the smell I had experienced when we visited J in the hospital room, just a few hours before his death. To tell you the truth, it was an extremely unpleasant odor, but it was distinctive, such that I will always associate it with J - it was how he could identify himself to me in my kitchen and I knew he was there... and I was comforted...

SONG: New Year's Day by U2

BOOK: If the Spirit Moves You: Life and Love After Death by Justine Picardie

POEM: New Year's Day Nap by Coleman Barks

Fiesta Bowl on low.

My son lying here on the couch

on the "Dad" pillow he made for me

in the Seventh Grade. Now a sophomore

at Georgia Southern, driving back later today,

he sleeps with his white top hat over his face.

I'm a dancin' fool.

Twenty years ago, half the form

he sleeps within came out of nowhere

with a million micro-lemmings who all died but one

piercer of membrane, specially picked to start a brainmaking,

egg-drop soup, that stirred two sun and moon centers

for a new-painted sky in the tiniest

ballroom imaginable.

Now he's rousing, six feet long,

turning on his side. Now he's gone.

QUOTE: "No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam." ~ Charles Lamb