Redtree Times

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For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.

—T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

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It is hard to believe that we are fast approaching the end of the second decade of what we called the New Millenium. Twenty years have passed in what seems the blink of an eye. So fast that the events of those years blend together more than all the years that came before them, at least for me.

I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle. I could have closed my eyes twenty years ago and just opened them to find a world that appears the same but is much changed in many ways, with new words and new language.

And yet we stand on the precipice of a new decade that will no doubt shock and surprise us with its own words and language.

What new voice are we awaiting to hear in this new year, this new decade? Is it one we haven’t yet heard? If so, will it have the power to inspire us, to lift us up? Or push us down? Will it change our perceptions of who we are and why we exist?

I have lots of questions.

Not many answers though.

I am just like most other folks, waiting without a clue for that new voice and new language that is most certainly on its way.

I am without certainty, not sure even if I feel optimism or pessimism. It is more like a numbness, like waiting silently in a dark closet for someone to finally open the door to let me out. Don’t know who’s going to open that door or what’s out there, good or bad, but I know it will be opening soon.

Hope we are ready for those new words and language.

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The painting at the top is Light and Wisdom which is currently

at the West End Gallery in Corning.