no escaping karma

The new year is no longer new. For weeks it seemed as though Christmas was just a couple days ago, but actually we are more than halfway to the vernal equinox. In New York City we’ve gained more than an hour of daylight since the solstice. I’m glad for the additional light, but I also miss the rest I enjoyed in the week between Christmas and the new year, however dark it might have been then.

I miss, too, the promise of the new year, even though this year whatever promise there might have been soon devolved into agony over whether or not we should send the children to school. I never got around to making any resolutions, so I haven’t broken any. I’m disappointed in myself all the same. I guess I wish I had made a resolution or two, despite the likelihood that they would have been broken.

The fantasy that making resolutions might make a real difference in my life corresponds with the fantasy that the new year constitutes a fresh start. There is no fresh start. Neither the past nor its effects dissolve as the clock strikes midnight and New Year’s Day begins.

I suppose I could regard each morning as a fresh start, but like anyone else I wake up in the same bed where I went to sleep the night before. And so in seeking to change, I tend look backward to find an entry point. Because in order to get the kids to school on time, I need to wake up on time. In order to wake up on time, I need to go to bed early enough. In order to go to bed early enough, I need to be finished with the day—that is, to have met my deadlines, cleaned the kitchen, and so on—at a reasonable time. In order to meet my deadlines without staying up too late, I need to have gotten started on the job early enough. In order to get started early enough, I need not to have so many other tasks demanding my attention. In order not to have too many tasks, I need not to say “Yes” to too much. If I’ve already said “Yes” to too many things, then I need to take care of them before I say “Yes” to anything more. Sometimes (most of the time) the bed doesn’t get made, or books and papers get left on the floor by my desk for days, which sometimes doesn’t matter—until I can’t find the thing that I need to meet the deadline or get out the door on time. Sometimes I stay up late, or I sleep too late, or I give up entirely and just read a novel instead of doing whatever might make tomorrow a better day.

Where in this karmic chain is a new beginning to be found?

In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors lives the same day every day. His ordeal could be seen as a metaphor for everyday life—by the time Groundhog Day came around a couple weeks ago, I noticed, the daily and weekly routines of ordinary time had become a repetitive slog. But one way in which Phil’s plight differs from that of everyday life is that he has (unwittingly, somehow) found an escape from karma: the consequences of whatever he did the day before vanish by the start of the next iteration of Groundhog Day. Every day he gets a truly fresh start on the same day.

I’ve never been so lucky. I have always lived within the usual constraints of time and karma (cause and effect). How can I live well within those constraints? Ah, wrote Philip Larkin, solving that question / Brings the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields. . . .

I had planned to post weekly (plans, lol), but now that the spring term has begun, it’s clear that posting every other week is more reasonable. So expect my next post Monday after next. In the meantime, read my poem “Matrilineage” at Ethel, publisher of gorgeous handmade zines and chapbooks.