THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS

In which I discuss Bon Iver and the weight of January 1.

To hear me read this post, scroll to the bottom where you will find an audio version

I have always found the new year weird. January 1^st is supposed to feel like a beginning, a fresh start. But it’s hard to feel reborn in the dead of winter.

I’ve never really made resolutions, but I used to do this thing at NYE parties I threw where people could write a letter to themselves and then I would give the letter back to them at the following year’s party. If they couldn’t make it to the party, I would mail it. I remained continually surprised by my own letters, the contents of which never aligned with what actually ended up happening that year. It was usually so off, like the time I saw “read two articles from The New Yorker every week” penned in my own neat handwriting yet had no recollection of writing this 365 days earlier. I hadn’t even gotten as far as purchasing a subscription to The New Yorker. In the early morning hours of January 1, 2020 I wrote “I’m afraid something dark is coming for me.” I hadn’t remembered writing this either, until I found the letter a year and a half later while moving. It was the only New Year’s Eve letter I got right. January 1^st is now an anniversary. It’s the day I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital in 2021. This year, tomorrow, that was four years ago.

An aura portrait taken in the early hours of January 1, 2020