The New Days
Tell me of these new days of yours.
Dear Friends,
I promise that I am dreaming and writing of horses, but they need time to gather themselves and begin their fiery galloping. Meanwhile, this new year is still emerging from the old.
Tell me what you are carrying from the old year, and what you are wishing for in the new.
— Sal
The New Days
The new days have come, and they are already not new. Look at the burdens they carry. One brings the flour, fat, and salt. Another carries the child and the garments of the child. A third holds everything that was the house. Were there treasures? There were treasures, but now they are gone. Was there a tree that you loved? Was there a market? O we lived and we knew that we lived. The air was thick with memories, and even the bad memories were good. I know you want to tell me that the treasures cannot be lost, that they are everywhere in the dust and sorrow. I am going to close my ears to you. I am going to close my eyes and ears so that I cannot know anything of the book in my hand. Even my fingers refuse. Once, I used them to make a carpet, the one you remember. There were leaves and vines, teeth on the leaves and barbs on the vines. The flowers were pinwheels and flames. Some were visible and some were not. This new day is every day, heavy with all the days. It is hot and it is cold. It is full of stories. Many places in this day there is shouting. This day lays its head on a bare floor, a cold floor. This day eats the food that it is given, disgusting food, or it refuses and goes hungry. There is a banging sound, and more yelling, and someone is crying. This day is a child. Does the child remember? What could a child remember?
¶
I unzip my fun from the bag and open the cloud gate. As always, light pours out, even in these bad days. It pours over my cold hands. The light is overhead reflecting itself, warm and comical as usual. Some are wrapped in furs, and some have hair sprouting from their heads, and some are just the squeaking sound of a hinge. Once you’ve seen the light, what then? Once you’ve carried the bag from place to place — everything you need is in it. I am still wondering, and I will not stop. Tiptoe in. Find anything that works. Do not bother to match one thing to another, there’s enough rhyme in any two objects.
Tell me what you are carrying from the old year, and what you are wishing for in the new.
Further adventures and new ways of seeing can be found in my book, The Uses of Art.
Artist Sal Randolph’s THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with works of art, inviting readers into new methods of looking that are both liberating and emboldening.
Dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent.
— Michael Cunningham
A joyful, dazzling treasure-box of a book.
— Bonnie Friedman
Here’s a guide, to waking up, over and over again.
— Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara
Beautiful, unsettling, the child and the cloud gate, hiding in a bag. "there's enough rhyme in any two objects". 💐
from the old year, i carry some bodily discomfort, some composting grief, some still-unraveling of old ways of being. but i feel the hoofbeats into the new -- journeys to new lands which are old at the same time, things-falling-apart which are also things-being-born, ways to use words that may free me and maybe others, anticipation. fire horse!