Wolf Moon
Wherein I Try to Ignore the New Year
Is it just me or are you too trying to hang on to a piece of someone else’s good news like flotsam after a shipwreck of a year. Are your blinds still down this late in the day? Earlier the sun sizzled an outline of morning light. Haven’t you finally rolled over and out of dreams and into this? And now, having finally flung the covers off, you may as well put water on to boil. Did your finger settle on a scar for a moment before going through the motions of the day’s beginnings? Avoiding mirrors you mete out the cereal and water by feel. Your one finger controls the news coming in to you: real lives compressed into one hundred little itches— human faces pressed up to the glass of what you call your phone.
Its okay, you didn’t make all of this, its only where you landed. Maybe you are a Fire Horse snorting in the cold for this new year. Or maybe you are more like me. Feeling the call of the new but back in bed somehow. The duvet should by now be just a covering flattened out over the bed, but I find I’ve rolled myself into it. Made it one of my layers again. And all the while outside the flakes’ whirling chaotic math happen in all directions in what looks to be a cold outside world.
And its not that I don’t hear you, wolf moon. I do. Or imagine I do. A howl of full circled, lonely, hunger. The inside of a silver trumpet out of the royal blueblack. Full illumination you say. Not yet, I say, groping for some other calendar that I don’t feel behind in. Not yet. I still have one more skin to wriggle out of. I do feel your reasonable ask to begin now. To imagine into the unknown. To not look back. To join the pack. Its breath shared visible now in the wild cold world’s new air.
But this is to you. You who still inward curling, dry skinned, moving in circles little understood. You who are not yet venturing out. For those who ignored the countdown. Or heard it only distantly. For those watching the window: a dog noses at a salted ice clump, a couple bundled up close together carrying yoga mats through the frozen city. To those of you who find poetry in rear-view mirrors. I get it. You just need a few more days. Tonight you could join me looking up at the first supermoon of the Gregorian calendar without expectation.
Gregorian New Year (January 1): The most widely used civil calendar date globally.
Lunar New Year / Chinese New Year (February 17): Based on the lunisolar calendar; it is a major celebration in China, Vietnam (Tết), and Korea (Seollal).
Nowruz (March 20): The Persian New Year, occurring on the spring equinox. It is celebrated in Iran, Central Asia, and by various diaspora communities.
Songkran (April 13–15): The Thai New Year, which follows the solar calendar and is famous for its water-splashing festivals.
Islamic New Year (Muharram 1): Based on the Hijri lunar calendar, the date shifts annually. In 2026, it is expected to begin around June 16 or 17.
Enkutatash (September 11): The Ethiopian New Year, which follows the Ethiopian calendar and marks the end of the rainy season.
Rosh Hashanah (September 11–13): The Jewish New Year, celebrated on the first and second days of the Hebrew month of Tishrei.
Diwali (November 8): While primarily a festival of lights, for many Hindu communities (particularly in North India and Gujarat), it also marks the start of a new financial or religious year.
To paraphrase Saint Augustine’s confessions: O lord make me good, but not yet.
—Jason
It's good to be back !
thank you for sharing your heart, full of honey + wounds, full of poetry + colour, with us. It is precious and lifting.