… And a Trite New Year

I’m trying to do a New Year’s piece here tied into writing – a fresh start, a clean piece of paper; the blank screen, the clean slate of a new year before us; a new book, a new pen, beginning fresh, anew.  How there is something cleansing about that process, ancient, being renewed in the flames.  And further, how every day really is the start of a new year.  Clever concept, yes?  No!  My margins are filled with angry, then pathetically defeated looking scribbles:  “Trite.  Trivial.  Too obvious.  Seriously?  I’m barfing in my throat just reading this.”  It’s not clever at all, not original and trite as hell.  Embarrassing.  I wish I could crumple up the computer screen page and hawk it in the garbage for the resounding definitiveness of the action and satisfaction.  A declaration that I am not trite, I am so much more profound than this crap. 

But an annoying little voice emerges, scratching persistently at my consciousness and it won’t shut up, won’t let me stew in my righteous mortification and disgust.  “But this is true.  This is how I truly feel.  It’s what I truly believe.  How can that be wrong?  Aren’t writers supposed to uphold the truth above all else?  Bravely put it to form for all the world to see?”  Bitch.  Annoying little bitch.  She cornered me.  So now I have to do this thing.  Stand behind the truth, unashamed and as herald.  Say something like -  

The blank page, the new year – they’re both going to get filled up one way or another, it’s up to me to fill them well and not let them be wasted.  A new chapter, a new beginning, new opportunity, placed in the spotlight and celebrated literally for a moment, the whole of the world watching, commemorating that moment with that little minute hand as a symbol; a symbol of hope, opportunity.  This – this is when my true life begins.  The past year is absolved – only the next minute matters.  We are sanctioned a reboot and fresh start once a year. 

But we forget that every moment of our lives portends the same thing.  We get a ‘do-over’ every single day.  As Tom Robbins reminds us in Still Life with Woodpecker, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”  It’s never too late to start again, we do it every day.  Instead of coffee, we should start every single day with fireworks and full awareness of what that new day can mean.  It is literally a new year every turn of that steadfast little minute hand.  If we fell off the wagon, became unbalanced, we merely need to wait up again till midnight, blow our horns, burn sacrificial fuses in pyrotechnic homage, and write a new list of resolutions on that fresh blank piece of paper.  Exonerate ourselves and begin again.  

See?  Trite as as all get out, right?  Aren’t you a tad embarrassed reading that as I was writing it?  I can’t let that go – I have to face and tackle that triteness head on.  

It is the undeniable truth that every day truly is a new day with a fresh start, the beginning of another new year.  But hasn’t that concept been trampled to death by corporate advertising, had the truth wrung from its broken limp neck by two-cent pundits?  Nevertheless it is still true, as my annoying little bitch inner voice testifies.  It’s up to us to reclaim the truth – our own truth – and hoard it back away to the privacy within ourselves where it belongs.  The truth is not a banner to sell hemorrhoid cream.  The ideals of the ‘60’s shouldn’t be a sound bite to sell a Subaru.  It is a profound and personal cornerstone of our life, critical for growth.  It’s been taken from us by the aggressive strategy of sheer overkill.  You don’t want to hear a popular song again on the radio as a weary DJ?  Play it hundreds of times until the public becomes sick of it as you are.  You don’t want the masses becoming enlightened, living independent, meaningful lives?  Take profundity, give it a catchy soundtrack and blast it on every channel until it becomes trite on steroids and no self-respecting person can ever again say, without deep pains of embarrassment, “every day is a new day.”  

All of our truisms have become trite.  And in so doing, have effectively been lost – co-opted.  We can’t even think of them without vomiting.  We hear people who publicly voice the trite and it is painful isn’t it?  We are embarrassed for them, we turn away; see them as shallow, commonplace, ignorant drones who have mindlessly bought into the party line.  But we overlook the paradox.  The truth is hidden from us in plain sight, buried in piles of syrup and hackneyed repetition.  Perfect.  We prevent ourselves from even thinking about a truism once it’s become so corrupted, much less embrace it for the richness it can give our lives. 

Trite is true.  Or, is truth truly trite?  And if it is trite, then what?  Do we get to skip right over it with that as our excuse for not really engaging the truth, letting it in?  Let’s embrace the trite, rescue it from the pit of overplayed mediocrity to which it’s been banished and enslaved.  ‘Trite’ must be renamed, re-conceptualized to be reclaimed, as a disenfranchised group takes the slurs hurled at them, turns them on their head, reshapes them as their own, then turns them back around to the ignorant; “This is mine now, you can’t hurt me with it anymore.”  We are “Queer”; you are “my N-word.”  Claimed, owned.  We mustn’t let the profound be taken from our world.  Reclaim it.  Don’t let it be soiled, don’t be embarrassed to utter it, hold it close, realize the sacred truth for what it is, what it truly is. 

It is not a truism’s fault it’s been so abused, manipulated, made trite.  It still exists and – it is still true, still profound if we can just rescue it, drag it out of the mire, purge it of the slime.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” not trite.

So how’s that for trite?!

Happy New Year!