A Year that Asks Questions

http://polaroid41.com/years-that-ask-questions/

Friday, January 15th, 2021 - 9:33am.

At the end of the year, I found myself humming and singing the Counting Crows song ‘A Long December.’ It was released in December 1996, the year I turned 16. I’m not sure when the last time I heard it was, but I guess it has lingered with me all this time. I kept singing, ‘It’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last…’ I’d hum it in the kitchen and sing it quietly to myself as I walked down the street, I’d sing it around the lump of sadness in my throat.

Signs around town wish us ‘une meilleure année’ - a better year. In the past we always boldly and optimistically wished each other ‘une bonne année,’ a good year...but I guess right now that seems too audacious. This year, tentatively, hopefully, skeptically the city of Toulouse is simply wishing its people a better year. This strikes me as funny, humble and terribly sad all at once.

In the United States we wish people ‘Happy Holidays,’ ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy New Year’ all throughout the end of December. Of course, we all shout ‘Happy New Year!’ at midnight on December 31st and continue to wish each other a happy new year on the 1st and possibly over the next few days, but well wishes are more in the lead up than in the aftermath. In France the new year’s wishes happen decidedly after midnight and in fact throughout the entire month of January. The tradition allows the entire month of January for friends, family members, colleagues, companies to presenter leurs voeux, present their New Year's wishes. I have had many awkward moments when I, the bubbly American, have been taken off guard by a suddenly effusive French professional contact presenting me with a litany of heartfelt New Year’s wishes. (So many awkward moments.) And yet I have grown to the love the tradition and am saddened by the collective hesitation around it this year. As if to say: it feels like too much to wish each other a ‘happy’ new year...maybe let’s just keep our heads down and quietly wish for a happier one?

I get it.

And.

It feels so defeated.

I’ve seen a few people circulating a quote from Zora Neale Hurston’s book ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’ It says: There are years that ask questions and years that answer. I imagine that posting this quote now is meant to suggest that 2020 was a year of questions and that this new year will bring us some answers. As I removed our 2020 paper calendar from the refrigerator in order to hang the new one, I thought of that quote and all at once I heard it the other way around: 2020 was a year of answers, and the answer was ‘no.’

No, you can’t go to school. No, you can’t travel. No, you can’t see your friends. No, you can’t be together. No, you can’t go to a restaurant. No, you can’t work, can’t celebrate, can’t go to a show, can’t go outside. No, you can’t show your face. No, you can’t hug or kiss or even shake hands. No.

There were answers in 2020, they just weren’t the answers I wanted.

In 2021, I feel ready to ask some questions:

What now?

How?

How can I find newness and joy? How can I preserve and grow my little artistic flame that the circumstances seem so determined to blow out? How can I be real about what I want and need and how can I step toward it? How can we have togetherness and connection? How can I embrace this moment? How can I plug into the grief, frustration and rage, and transform it into fuel?

http://polaroid41.com/years-that-ask-questions/