December: a month many of us wrap presents for those we care about—a package of thinking of you, a package of love. Sometimes that present is a card or a text, a Facetime call or a Zoom gathering. It is the present of being present with someone, of being in community.
December also brings a reckoning of the year past: books read, trips taken, goals met and delayed. A time to consider what you want to continue doing in 2025 and what you want to alter in the new year.
I’ve been listening to John Green’s book The Anthropocene Reviewed. (Highly recommend, and on audio if only for the chapter on the Kauai o-o, a bird that was.) The chapter on orbital sunrises tells the story of the first art made in space by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. He sketched the view looking back at Earth. That perspective—the blue jewel of Earth in the black of space—makes me think of the vastness of the universe, the ongoingness of deep space. Here on planet Earth everything physical is finite: a bedroom, a house, the yard, a city has limits, states and countries have borders, our bodies stop at the outermost layer of skin.
But not space. Earth is in a solar system among many solar systems in a galaxy among many galaxies, in a universe that goes on and on. How do we fathom something that doesn’t end? How do we feel when we picture our planet Earth orbiting in that endless darkness?
Back here on Earth, all endings are also beginnings. Where the bedroom ends, the hall begins. Where the yard ends, the street or a neighbor’s yard begins. A country ends and another country or an ocean begins. The ocean ends at a land mass, the land mass at yet another body of water. You finish reading one book and begin another. You stop walking and begin sitting. You are still and then you move your body.
Where would the universe end? What would stop it? A wall? A wall implies something on the other side. Does ending mean blackness unbroken by any star, blackness uninhabited by dark matter or black holes, a dark nothing. But isn’t a dark nothing made of something? As John Green states, we know so little of the knowable universe. How do we begin to grasp the unknown?
As you reckon with 2024, as you hug loved ones and consider what comes next in 2025, perhaps take a moment to peer up into the sky and consider things that end, and other things that are perhaps always beginning.
P.S. All of this to say: I’ve cleared my desk of the chaos of 2024. Bring it, 2025!
“How do we begin to grasp the unknown?” This was a really good one, Laura! Questioning is the beginning.
Yes, questioning is the beginning. Thanks for reading!
I love this post thinking about space and endlessness. Thank you Laura!
Thanks for reading, Katie!
Sometimes a gift is a blog post shared with your community. Thank you! I am so enjoying getting to read more of your work.
Thanks for reading! Happy New Year!
A cogent reflection of the year almost past and an exemplary desk-clearing (symbolizing all the clearing one could do) all written with clarity and a bit of the lyricism present in your last month’s blog.
Yes, so much clearing one could do. Thanks for noticing the lyricism! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, Laura! I also start thinking about things like stars and the universe and infinity during this time of year. At the very end of something and at the very beginning of something else… which is all arbitrary anyway! *sigh* I’m reckoning with 2024 and not quite yet ready to tell 2025 to bring it but I’m still truckin. Glad to be in your orbit.
Love
Kristy
Happy New Year, Kristy! I’m sighing with you. Let’s keep orbiting!
Oh! And I got that book you recommended to take with me on the trip: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-orbital-booker-prize-2024-winner. Thanks!
Great way to end the old and begin the new! Happy New Year!
Thanks for reading. Happy New Year!