The Zen of the New Year

"There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence." -- Meister Eckhart

I think about this Meister Eckhart quote at the end of the year. For some mysterious reason, to humans an imaginary line is drawn through the time that is celebrated as New Years Eve. There is the granite-like sensation of past and future and we are really only fully aware for a brief moment of the present. And it often times reflects in our faces joyfully. Or sadly. What our consciousness is feeling at the moment of transition is what waves to the world. Similar to the Greek comedy and tragedy theatre masks--smiling when one mask is chosen and frowning when the other is used.

What mask will I wear when the clock strikes midnight?

When that clock does strikes twelve on New Years Eve, people kiss, hug, cheer, raise their glasses in toast, exchange presents, often even sharing these personal gestures fully with perfect strangers at that moment in time. That precise, present moment.

It is potentially the single greatest expression of a mass Zen-like moment that takes place all year. Though it may be at times and with certain people be fueled with alcohol, it still works.

The New Year may be all about resolutions and changes and promises to ourselves and to others, but it is really that moment that counts. When we recognize ourselves, captured in amber for that moment in time.

I want piles of amber moments to climb down from when my time is up. I have a couple handfuls already.

Feet

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.--Oliver Wendell Holmes

I sat down across the table from my wife after a grueling road-trip of meetings over the last couple of weeks which included a car-deer accident that resulted in a total loss to my vehicle. Away from home for the last 4 days and 3 nights, 30-plus hours in the car alone, suffering through a poor choice of a book on tape (Simon Schama's, A History of Britain, Volume III, Snore!), five meetings and Michigan's ever challenging upper peninsula weather--it was just good to have my butt in a familiar seat that wasn't hot or moving.

Contemplating what I thought of the new haircut she was sporting--I like it--we caught up on things that happened to each of us during our time away. I then remembered an interesting dream that I had had the night before I was to return, and shared it with her. I said, " I dreamt that you were on this extended trip--a month or so-- and that you kept sending me these pictures on my phone of your feet. Sometimes they were on the ground, propped up on things, left foot alone, right foot only, both feet together and even the occasional one with people touching them. And always at different locations, like you were traveling around all the time." She was grinning at me as I was telling this, obviously enjoying where this was going.

She interrupted me (not rudely I would add) with the obvious question on her mind, "Did I have nail polish on them?" I should have saw that question coming. She wanted to make sure those feet of hers looked good in my dream.

This is where it got interesting.

"Yes, you did, but different polish in every picture. Sometimes multiple colors on the toes with the occasional toenail sporting an intricate design or I even remember one resembling a face staring into the camera from your big toe." She must have spent a lot of time working on those toes during her travels. I have seen the process first-hand and seems to be time-intensive and smelly. Not the feet, the polish odor.

So how do I interpret such a dream--not that it is all that important to have a interpretation--to understand what my unconscious was doing that night?

I think I just missed my wife very much...her feet as well.