MUTSA

2019. What a most insignificant looking number. Well, for better or worse, for the next three hundred and sixty-something days, it will be our number (LOL our days are numbered – some gallows humour for my gothic crowd). Perhaps I should start afresh.

2019. As time progresses we just assume that we too move with it. In the name of convenience, perhaps, we have largely relegated ‘time’ to being a singularly linear, infinite entity, and so on a backdrop of a constant, never-changing time stream, we would grow and change and in our mind’s eye – progress. Self-delusion seems to be a favourite hobby of ours, for I would argue that time is as linear as it is cyclic, and as regular as it isn’t. The years change, but each year comes with the same selection and sequence of seasons and months and already we see evidence of a pattern, a repetition, concerned with the nature of life and living.

And so with each new year we come forward with resolutions to be different, to be more positive, to drink less or to eat more, to give K-Pop a real, unbiased chance (never) to change, and with our heart fixed firmly on these wants, we would purport to have changed, ignoring that in the grand cycle of the universes, at least part of what was will be. The past is not completely behind us, but ahead as well, and in fact one could say what happened is still happening, just as what will happen has already happened.

That was dense (for me, at least). It is important to point out that I am not saying that you are who you were yesterday. It is possible to change, and in fact impossible to not do so. What I mean to say is that in forecasting change, one cannot simply expect what was to no longer be. All we have done is as much a part of us as it is of time, not just time lived, but time as it is, and so we come to the truth of it. Time is not some arbitrary thing (It actually does not exist, if we are being honest).

Time is life, and life, as complex and organic as it is, is time, as linear as it is cyclic, and as regular as it isn’t.

What has happened is still happening, and the evidence is as clear as Alicia Keys’ skin (maybe she bathes in fish oil, like Madonna). Past revolutions are knocking at our doors, and they are not here to tell knock-knock jokes or sing Christmas carols. One only has to look at France or Brazil to see the sewn seeds of discontent sprouting into dangerously healthy saplings. African countries are passed from one oppressor to the next like a baton between a team of dictatorial Olympic sprinters (LOL what a funny image).

And the evidence is not purely political. For all our change (and we have changed), we have not. We are as tribal as ever we were, with each of us declaring ourselves leftist or rightist (all covers for fascism). Time moves, but it doesn’t, just as we change, but we do not. Once one realizes and accepts this paradox of existence, it becomes increasingly clear who one is and how one can and must change, and how also one cannot. As importantly, one applies this standard of thinking to others – it is the mark of a selfish man to hold others to a higher standard than he holds himself (we all dabble in selfishness, I know).

I know. I know this seems confused, but it is not that – only confusing, if it is even that. I know that Stephen King predicted the rise of Donald Trump in his 80’s classic, ‘The Dead Zone’. I know that the process of learning to live, happy as we are and for who we will be is difficult on its own, and is made more difficult in today’s world where our dreams are not our own, where we aspire to standards set by others. I also know that it is within our power to be as time, and then transcend even that limited and faulty notion. The light of your life, all lives, no matter how small or scarred, shines beyond the small confines of time, burning so bright that it sears itself into all of our hearts. Even death cannot dim that light. Happy 2019.