In The Presence of Possibility I Find Transformation
The sculpture of time, the melting of certainty, and the malleability of what has happened
“even though your suffering feels eternal, unrelenting, the new year is full of promise, and it is coming fast.”
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
The problem with the end of the year is that it’s cold, which has a way of making everything feel certain even though it isn’t. Not remotely. Not even a little or at all. But anyone who walks to work in colder climates like me knows that the days recently have contained an unforgivable bitterness to them.
I am glad for the end.
For the year coming, that is not this one.
There comes a point where enough time has passed that the momentum of your year feels sure and determined. The trajectory set, the path already won. In years of despair, there's a logic that the very fabric from which the year is woven was made from such a feeling, that there is too much of it for this not to be true. And so as time passes there's an expectation, a certainty, that there is more up ahead, that you know already what the year will look like even if it isn’t over yet. Which for a while was how I felt.
Despite this and in the face of the new year, I do feel the wavering of my certainty.
I’m reminded of the ways people visualize months of the year, as clocks or wheels, as strange crosswords. I don’t have the greatest imagination, time has always moved, to me, forward and in a straight line.
The years flatten, however, and take odd shape.
In childhood, they swirled then bent, arced, took the form of things that have no real name. The teenage years, with steep descent, start to feel sharp and defensive. As we get older, as we try to make sense of things, the shapes become tangible, years have real feeling to them, take meaning, even if at times the meaning is there was none at all—that we suffered uselessly, endured endlessly, and found eventually the end. Even where we find nothing, a shape gets made nonetheless, from what hadn’t happened. The sculptability of life, of knowing that what is there is yours to use, is how I’ve made sense of things as this fact became clear—that time passes first through our fingers, and must be worked seamlessly beside the past.
The past which, once malleable, has hardened in its shape. The paint dries, the wax seals, time moving forward, solidifies. There is more behind me than ahead. But the new year, with all its fresh material to sculpt, always seemed a bit like a promise, which itself feels rounded and warm in my hands and mouth. The heat and bend of possibility, of an entire year immaculate, untouched, clean of experience, seems to reach me from its place. I feel that this too is something to be used, that must be used, to make.
At the sight of newness, of metamorphosis, I find always these facts with the same surprise. That my life is my own, and I am in charge of making it better. That much of what plagues me is in the past which has already passed through my fingers and is now unchangeable. With a few short hours of December left, I know this year is being set in its way, hardening against that long stretch of wild horizon until the present turns over into the past. That despite how different I wish it were, there are things I cannot change. And though I wish the carefully sculpted work of this time had a different shape, this is the only one I have.
I feel the promise of the new year close and take the heat of it in my hands. I see that certainty, like stiffness, is capable of melting, though the heat is not enough to undo what has happened, it does give a little room, the way hindsight gives a little room to view things differently even if we cannot make them something else.
I have suffered this year.
An unchangeable fact, a finished shape. But there is possibility, I feel its warmth, and so find transformation.
This year I have suffered. I will not suffer that way again.
In the final days of December, I have felt this sentiment all the time. That the possibility of difference, already makes things different. That the fabric of the year is bending a little. That things have already changed. This is not a year where the relief is that it is over, it is, that I have decided to end it here. And in farewell, I hold this year and the warmth of promise together, because they inform each other, because they say I am not you and you will never be me, and when I pull away I see the horizon has a familiar shape, not quite what it was, not really different from what it was always going to be. But different enough yes, to go on.
And I know that plenty of people promise difference and find that the years that come are the same as the last. I know our fickle nature, nothing is so certain and unchangeable as the past. With that, I cannot compete, cannot dream of such reliability. There are few deals struck over locked pinkies that were not broken. Words that were not kept. But I feel the sweat at the back of my neck, that midnight is moving fast.
A promise is only breakable by the people who make it. This is its virtue. I have a deal with the year to come and with myself. And maybe, like many artists, I don’t have the eye yet, to make it precisely what I want, but there is something to be said about going some distance instead of none at all. I will not break the promise. Maybe I cannot live up to its totality, but I will do some of it. And if I can’t do some of it, I will do a little of it. And if I can’t do that, then I will say the same thing next year. For as small and terrifying as that is, it is already an improvement. Which means nothing has been broken. Especially not me.
And anyway, the promise of the new year is not that anything will change. It is the assurance that you have everything at your disposal to make something different.
A couple of weeks before it felt like the time we’d call “the end of the year,” I spent a Sunday in my writer's group. I’d been having a hard time of it, editing. Really I hadn’t been working on it in the weeks leading up to the meeting which I should’ve been. An important deadline was missed and it felt too painful too disappointing. All I had to give was a chapter fraught with errors, fragmented in its narrative, and no idea what to do with it, how to transform it. With clear reluctance, I shared my work, and also the difficulties—the feeling of inability after being away that though what I wanted to say was very clear to me, I could not put it down. Not even in simple terms, or straightforwardly. The text felt reluctant, like myself, to adapt, to take on the true meaning. Plenty of things felt confirmed then about the things I hadn’t done that I had planned by then to have done. Everyone though was nice. What was there they liked, and what could be critiqued made sense. In their encouragement, I felt less alone. There was an illuminating sense of possibility, of the feeling that what I had wasn’t so bad, but also that it would change, and despite the overwhelming truth of it, I would be the one to do it.
“It’s like clay,” Stacey said finally, in a way that I have obviously thought often of since. “It gets more malleable once you warm it with your hands.”
“Maybe it’s better to have the terrible times first. I don’t know. Maybe then, you can have, if you live, a better life, a real life, because you had to fight so hard to get it away⸺you know?⸺from the mad dog who held it in his teeth. But then your life has all those tooth marks, too, all those tatters and all that blood.” This morning, this evening, so soon by James Baldwin
An exhaustive resource, sure. More time won’t always be there. One year we’ll come up short. December 15th, 2024 1:27 PM
My life is already a little more promising. I feel I’m already braver than I was. December 17th, 2024 5:11 PM
But it’s difficult for me to imagine the longevity of friendship after those many years without. There was a time when I was very lonely. So lonely I’d thought it was all I’d ever be. December 8th, 2024 10:47 PM
A friend of mine told me she doesn’t like New Year’s Eve because she thinks of everything she hasn’t done. Which is funny to me, because I tend to think of everything I will do, which is often what wasn’t finished in the year that had passed. This year I feel an especially easy train of thought, can find a ready list of everything I thought would happen. But, I feel a certain sense of gratitude, that behind one year is another. The simplicity of fact, that some things didn’t happen this year, just so there was something to look forward to in the next. An optimistic view sure, but not difficult really. What is there to mourn when there is always something to aim for, always something good looming up ahead?
And yeah I’m a little more disappointed than I have been in years past, but in the face of years like this you have to ask yourself, what did I do with all that time? Did I make myself good food, did I sleep when I was tired and cry when I had the desire, did I tell people I loved them, did I right my wrongs, did I apologize when I needed to, did I buy things I liked maybe when I shouldn’tve, was there a spring, good days, hard days I survived, did I see things that moved me, things that changed me, find something out about myself that I didn’t know before, did I try something new, did I hear good songs, was there beauty, was there laughter, did I try, is it possible there was good reason I didn’t manage what I thought, is it possible my survival was too much, but enough? And I think the answer will mostly be yes.
And if the answer is no, well, the music isn’t playing. The countdown hasn’t begun. Which means there’s still time.
And when the ball drops,
There’s still gonna be time.
Here is the December Mood Board warm and glowing, it promises it will be good to you.
and HERE is a short playlist of songs (mostly from movie scores) that make me feel the promise of the future
Here is also a short short playlist of mostly instrumental songs that make me feel the promise of the future
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters
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My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here!
Here’s to coffee Fridays, to the promising new year, to the material waiting to be used on the other side.
Love always,
Chloé
New Years Eve is always the most hopeful holiday to me!
your clay is warm. i feel it! 🫂