THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601050090
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
I AM totally out of sorts and I have only the culture - and probably the moon, my hormones and the hoot owl - to blame. This happens to me every January, this New Year's letdown, but despite its predictability, I still suffer. If not for football weekends, I should surely perish.
Thank goodness the Internal Revenue Service furloughed the 1040s for a while.
T.S. Eliot was wrong: April is not the cruelest month, January is. The debut month in the Gregorian calendar, named for Janus, the two-faced Roman god of gates and doorways, commences with conspicuous year-end post-mortems and year-ahead prognostications, conspicuous revelry and conspicuous talk of resolutions about ``starting anew.'' Dec. 31 finality gives way with the stroke of 12 to Jan. 1 potentiality. We can all now be happy: It's a new year! There's hope!
But it's the dead of winter. Eliot's waste land. As soon as peace on Earth and silent night receded, I started grinding my teeth again. Wake me up for Martin Luther King's birthday.
Contrary to cultural mythology, there is no real closure in December, just collapse, and no grand beginning in January, just the start of another increment of time and the immense fatigue left over from the previous month's mad dash of shopping-wrapping-packing-mailing-baking-decorating-entertaining-visiting- and-other-manner-of-tension-filled-merrymaking. Not to mention separation anxiety from loved ones truly missed.
The multicolored lights illuminating winter's dark come down Jan. 1 and the blues, or some variant, set in Jan. 2. Where did the warm glow go? And the magic? What is this lockjaw?
I still have ``holiday'' cards - they once were Christmas and Hanukkah cards, then they became ``New Year's'' cards, now they're seasonally generic - and thank-you notes to script. Even gifts yet to be delivered. Resolutions? Who has the energy or the will now to reflect on life's vastness? Resolutions are better made, and kept, in February, a more civilized month - named for the Roman festival of purification - than its change-for-change's-sake predecessor.
Besides, most change made in January is unmade by March.
Just like Janus, we are caught in January coming and going, looking backward and forward, still connected to the recent past, but mindful of a deceptively clean-slated future. While the rest of the natural world hibernates, we humans will renew! Some of us even make absurd futuristic forecasts and talk ominously about ``new ages'' and the coming of the Apocalypse. Exacting meaning out of meaninglessness has always proved vexing. At New Year's, it's especially annoying.
I already dread the mass-market, mass-media countdown to the third millennium, which has been accelerated a year - from 2001 to 2000 - to accommodate mass consumerism and induce mass nausea.
Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a ``Renaissance'' weekend for intellectuals at New Year. Pray, what do they do in April when real rebirth occurs? Set out on a pilgrimage for Canterbury?
I sort of like the Republicans' response to the Democrats' Hilton Head, S.C., retreat: They hosted the ``Dark Ages'' in Miami. (But now, notice, they're meeting, too.)
Hey, it is dark! It's January, a time to rest, refuel, huddle in a cave or in front of a fire, burying memory and desire until the spring rains. In other words, to slow down, not gear up. Continue with daily life, hopeful, yes, but steer essentially the same course. Give the snow, sleet, ice, cold and dark their due.
So . . . take a chance, don't set yourself up for failure, use the stairs, not the escalator or the elevator, and stay away from weight-loss plans that teach you how to diet but not how to eat; read, think, learn, give and receive with grace, and live for each day, not just the weekend.
And when February arrives, don't grumble about how boring it is. It's far less conspicuous than January and has the verve to offer up 28 days, instead of the staid 31, and leap ahead occasionally. Despite the New Year pressure to reorder life, time is not running out on us. But we may be running out on time. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is book editor for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB