New Year's brooding

By James Carroll | December 31, 2007

WHAT IS MORE worthless than the ripped off page of a calendar? Indeed, what is more brusque than that act of ripping off? On New Year's, you start over with a new calendar, and the fresh pages, each with its day or week or month, are innocent and beautiful. You move through time by sullying each page, tearing and discarding it. In the black-and-white cinema of your mind, a locomotive forever chugs along its tracks, while in the foreground, the pages of the calendar flip by, into the wind. Is that all there is to time?

The trouble with the image of time as a calendar with pages to be torn and tossed is that it can reinforce your general feeling of disconnectedness, as if the events of life cohere no more than one page does to another. All that stands between you and the cinder pile of history are a pair of staples. You, too, are a mere page on the calendar, and the dull roaring in the back of your head is that locomotive, bombing into the unknown, with no relationship to what it leaves behind. No relationship, finally, even to you - unless, of course, you are the train. Past, present, and future are nothing but a set of unchosen tracks along which you move, picking up speed - leaving behind the litter of what just happened. This is time experienced as mere chronology, one damn thing after another, and then it's over.

The benign brooding of New Year's suggests another way to think of time. The Greeks distinguished between chronos and kairos, one a railroad track spanning the surface of life, and the other, say, a spiral winding down into the depths of wisdom and true knowledge. There is chronological time, with its detritus [debris or discarded material] , and there is contemplative time, where nothing is lost. The first depends on the skill of forgetfulness, while the second nurtures a feeling for the past through memory. To the first, the future is the next surprise; to the second, the future is familiar, because the past and the present prepare it.

The word contemplation has a Latin root, suggesting "time with," as if in contrast to chronology as time alone. But the "with" here is not merely social. Contemplative time is time in which connectedness is perceived as essential. There is no fully human knowing unless it is knowing "with"; knowing, especially, how one experience links with another. The connection is what matters, and in contemplative time, the connection is what shows itself. As the scientists tell you, there is homo sapiens, the creature who knows; and there is homo sapiens sapiens, the creature who knows that it knows. Who knows "with." And "knowing with," of course, comes to us from Latin as conscience.

That double knowing is the realm of meaning. It is what you live for, and why you aim to move from mere chronology to contemplation. The first is episodic, with events following each other as if randomly. The second is dramatic, with events joined not by mere sequence, but by causation. In contemplation, where you perceive the "with" in time, you see that the past, present, and future flow into one another not accidentally, but as choice flows into consequence, which flows into a new choice, and an ever-larger consequence. In the spiraled knowing of contemplation, you see that choice is the seat of connectedness, which makes time the realm of morality, as well as meaning. You grasp your part in the simple wholeness of all that is, a part defined by freedom and responsibility. The episodes of your life, therefore, are not discrete pages to be discarded one by one, but form a moral unity, the purpose of which is to be understood. Every day you have lived has been preparing you for this day - the fullness of time. Kairos.

The timespan of Earth stretches back across thousands of millions of years, with the cosmos stretching farther back through years without number. Your lifespan is less than a blink of the eye of time, and so, for that matter, is all of humanity's. The law of chronology suggests that, on such a scale, what you make of the turning calendar means nothing. But the law of contemplation is otherwise. Today, the previous span of cosmic incomprehensibility adds up in the sum of your thoughtfulness. New Year's is the joyful celebration of all that has ever transpired anywhere, aware of itself now in you.

Using my photo

I took this photo:





Before a Clippers v Jazz game last year.

I got this email this morning:



Hi Fred,

I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has been short-listed for inclusion in the fourth edition of our Schmap Los Angeles Guide, to be published mid-January 2008.



Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can:
i) See which of your photos has been short-listed.
ii) Submit or withdraw your photo from our final selection phase.
iii) Learn how we credit photos in our Schmap Guides.
iv) Browse online or download the second edition of our Schmap Los Angeles Guide.

While we offer no payment for publication, many photographers are pleased to submit their photos, as Schmap Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure, and are free of charge to readers. Photos are published at a maximum width of 150 pixels, are clearly attributed, and link to high-resolution originals at Flickr.

Our submission deadline is Sunday, January 06. If you happen to be reading this message after this date, please still click on the link above (our Schmap Guides are updated frequently - photos submitted after this deadline will be considered for later releases).

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides


Kinda cool

My Top Ten for 2007

Great year for music. Too many good releases to fit in a top ten.

1. Mark Olson "Salvation Blues" - simply his best in awhile. I wasinfatuated with this from the first listen, but seeing these intimate songs performed in small venues turned that into an enduring mature love. I really like Olsen's unassuming nature and awkward innocence.

2. Peter Case "Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John" Great moving songs from start to finish, which is actually pretty amazing; Song writer with an acoustic guitar folk records tend to get a little samey. Not this one. Weakest track, unbelievably is the duet with Richard Thompson. This also benefited from seeing the songs live.

3. Josh Ritter "Historical Conquests of..." This could have been, maybe should have been, my #1. In past years it certainly would have been. I spent weeks spinning this over and over again, and Ritter put on a great show at the El Rey.

4. Wilco "Sky Blue Sky" Another beautifully written, well performed record that was spun non-stop.

5. Band of Horses "Cease to Begin" Beards and flannel rock, which is intimate and personal while at the same time abstract.

6. Joe Henry "Civilians" This record creeped up on me.

7 Richmond Fontaine "Thirteen Cities" As with Peter Case, I'm
perplexed that this band doesn't get more love.

8. Bettye Lavette "The Scene of The Crime" feels like my weekend jeans.

9. Glossary "Better Angels" Great garage rock that's more complex than it seems on first listen

10. Two Cow Garage "III" Much improved song writing without sacrificing any of the energy.



Missed, but would have been in the top 10 in other years:

National "Boxer"
Okkervil River "Stage Names"
Arcade Fire "Neon Bible"
Dexateens "Hardwire Healing" Rawk.
John Doe "A Year In the Wilderness"
Sharon Jones & Dap Kings "100 days, 100 nights"
Patty Griffin "Children Running Through"

I've really been listening to the "I'm Not There" soundtrack, Stax
50th anniversary set. I decided to eliminate them and the Centro EP
from consideration

Disappointments:

Iron & Wine Shepherd's Dog
Golden Smog
Dogs "Dirty Shop"
Son Volt (I listened to and enjoyed out of the box, but now when one
of those songs comes up on shuffle, I'm tempted to hit "skip")