Tonight’s act of defiance in the face of fear consists of accepting Jenn’s invitation to join her at Soul Revival, a big happy dance party held in the awesome grounds of what used to be a church building in Boston’s South End.

My dears, I wish us all a new year full of joy, laughter, and wisdom. See you on the other side.

Yehuda Amichai — A Man in His Life

A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.

On the wall above the whiteboard in what used to be my girls’ classroom, there hangs a small homemade poster. In red and black Sharpie on green construction paper, it reads (in between a few stray curlicues) “Fear is what prevents the flowering of the mind. — Krishnamurti.” On a Saturday in September, the school building quiet of its usual laughter and recriminations, I climbed a small blue plastic chair to tape up my handiwork. None of my students ever asked about it, and I never pointed to it dramatically in the middle of a lesson. I just left it there, without fanfare or comment, vaguely thinking that its sentiment might enter the bodies of my children through some strange, slow osmosis. I liked to imagine R.’s huge eyes lingering on Krishnamurti’s words during a particularly boring day, mulling over what they meant in her life.

I am telling you these facts now (O my Best Beloved) because I am filled with fear, and I do not wish to be ruled by it any longer.

I have been afraid, for instance, to write this post, in which I tell you that about a month ago I decided to leave that classroom, that school, R.’s eyes. I have been afraid of the leap into the unknown that comes now. I have been afraid that I have broken parts of my life and myself that I’m not sure how to fix.

But I am telling you these facts now because I am filled with fear, and I do not wish to be ruled by it any longer. And this post, whether you know it or not (O my Best Beloved) is my first step.

Watch this space.