The mandatory "Hello 2009!".

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment, turn into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened when a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen. Or a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you. that life has not forgotten you. That it holds you in its hands. It will not let you fall."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

So I start 2009.

Past is past, and I am done mulling over it. The burdens don't exist anymore. Just perspectives. And hope. How things turn out to be, is perhaps just how I see them to be. And right now, I see them to be as they are. Raw, but perfect. I can mould them to suit me better still (and be changed myself in the process), because there is no limit to perfection. Maybe, there is nothing called perfection. Maybe, there is only infinity, and possibility.

I need to make this good.

----

January has got to be the best month in a year. Unbeatable, I would say, in consistently filling you with hope, optimism and excitement. Every single year. I love beginnings.

Except when it comes to Catch-22. I swear, this book has a terribly dreadful start. I just felt like I was thrust into complete madness. But after the initial frustrations, I am starting to absolutely love this book. The madness makes too much sense, and the logic that's made to seem irrational, is just pure genius. I hope to finish it by the time school starts, because The Institution is a bureaucratic absurdity of its own, and I need to have something to guffaw over it.

But damn this optimism, I am actually looking forward to school. My modules are all settled, and I have to admit, they sound much more interesting/exciting this time around. There is no reason why I should not be looking forward to it, but at the same time, there is no reason why I should be looking forward to it. It's just vapid, nerve-racking drudgery, and the stakes are higher this time. Never mind. I will make it good, like I said.

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr could be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy, and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22