To salvage a year is to reduce yourself to what you are not.

What you are not is what is written on the page, because you find

comfort in what is not there. There, the series of lies, the words

and their approximations. Allow yourself to approximate the past

year: one family, one workshop, one major rally, one major blog,

one publication, two significant chance encounters, two romantic

dates, three organizations, four major confessions, five crushes,

six failed attempts. Attempts are gentle risks that choose to stay

at the borderline of here and there. Here and there is nonexistent,

for you only live in the here and here. Here are the words

of the year: perspicacious, adumbrate, scathe, vortex.

To be in the vortex of the universe is to drown the city in a mug

of sweetened coffee. For you, the coming year will be free

of any shame and fear. Because if you take away the fears,

the shameless pride, the inhibitions to take a stride or two,

the bedrock certainties of life, the complexities of losing and gaining,

then you will find it—true happiness—spreading itself out

under the day’s heat, waiting to be noticed. Position yourself

out in the sun, and surrounding you are these panes of sunlight,

these winding streets, these spaces that are nothing but empty

spaces, and this direction, obvious and inviting, that you need to take.