I tally the books, authors, and the tidbits and fragments of general knowledge that had been unknowable in all the years before the bracketed period. A year can be pivotal in redefining, reinforcing or ultimately changing your positions and ideas about a myriad of things. Take shame, for example. My ideas on that feature of features was pretty solid. Then in the Spring I read Sigmund Freud's "Totem and Taboo" and I decided to reconsider. Then we have the issue of the Gospels; I had no idea that there had been a movement at the beginning of the XXth century that sought to cement the historicity of the documents to bring them safely into scholarly territory. I quickly added German theologian Rudolf Karl Bultmann into my Alibris wishlist, and swallowed the Wikipedia apéritif on the subject. But my inventory yielded many other interesting things too. I learned that there was such a thing as a South American Guy de Maupassant, in the form of Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga; I read two of his ouvres: "Jungle Tales" and "Stories of Love, Madness, and Death" and they were solid (and cringeworthy). I found authors I never knew existed such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Menendez Pidal, Lissagaray, Josiah Stamp to name a few, and found yet other strange beings and doings of that understudied horror machine that is the Third Reich (strange Italian mystic Julius Evola -monocle and all- hired to work for the Special SS think tank Ahnenerbe to research Freemasons)
Aside from the literary realm, my film savvy was drastically improved, and this year's brackets contain my first Bresson (Au Hasard Balthazar), my first Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amour) as well as my first viewings of Rashomon, Exterminating Angel, M, Judgement at Nuremberg, and so many other superb movies, both old and new. In fact, this was a great year in film, and I shall endeavor to name most from Well Done (good stuff) to Rare (popcorn flick): The Tree of Life, Margin Call, A Dangerous Method, Midnight in Paris, The Ides of March, J.Edgar, Drive, Limitless, Planet of the Apes and guiltily X-Men: First Class, Captain America, Green Lantern (I was an avid fan growing up), and maybe Thor. Actually, maybe not.
I'm sure the above paragraph would have been reinforced had I seen: "The man nobody knew", "Anonymous", "Garbo: The Spy" and "Revenge of the Electric Car" but alas, I'm gonna have to wait until they show up on Netflix.
2011's Music inventory also yielded several golden eggs that I didn't foresee on that 31st of December, 2010: Neon Indian's fantastic "Era Extraña" spearheading the list, but also Hooray for Earth, The Horrors, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, M83, Washed Out, Com Truise, all came out with great albums, and last but not least, the 80's continued yielding bands that were unknown to me before: Snake Corps and Polyrock.
After having amassed and grouped all the data, books, bios, movies and music, I find that 2011 -just like all the years that preceded it- did not fail to surprise, illuminate, and introduce new things into my life.
Then (Then!) comes the final part of the rite; you tally the tragedies and blessings, both personal and worldly, that afflicted, or refreshed the world. The Japanese Tsunami, the Earthquakes, the fall of strongmen everywhere, the new friends, acquaintances and paramours, as well as the rise of mass consciousness at home in the form of an Occupation. The death of loved ones, and admired ones (Ernesto Sabato, Jorge Semprún died this year) which hit you in a special way as you are reminded (as if we could forget) of our own fickle mortality.
After this, your inventory now complete, you wait until that final hour of the year when the sounds of firecrackers can already be heard from a distance, and find a place of solace where you can linger for a moment to reflect just how much was able to happen, enter and change in the last 365 days. Can you doubt then, even for a second, that come what may, new blessings, tragedies, friends, ideas, authors, books, music and movies will stack anew? Before rejoining your friends and loved ones for bubbly, wonder for a minute with vertiginous anticipation, on the shadow that lies ahead. I swear that if you do that, for a few magical moments, you can almost feel the content of the future year palpitate in your heart. Newness is always imminent. Exciting, Scary, Inevitable.
For me at least, 2012 comes as my whole life has changed before my eyes during 2011. An omen in the form of Marc Chagall's "The Hour between the Wolf and the Dog (between Darkness and Light)" came to me in May while browsing prints for my wall. I purchased it and find myself staring at its strange symbolism all the time (I'm doing it as I type), that seems to make sense to me in a very personal way. The moment between the Wolf and the Dog; What did he mean? Between a savage nature and a learned one? Between the darkness of oblivion and the light of destiny? The picture seems to me to be representing the kiss of fate given to the artist at a grey, blue moment; a moment that the kiss will forever change. Be that or not what Chagall implied, there are years in one's life where such moments occur. This happened to me in 2011.
And so it is with the transition from 2011 and 2012, what with all the hype about the "new age of consciousness"; be it the end of the Mayan 13th Baktun, or the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, drastic changes in my life have been developing in the last few months, and will continue to unfold in 2012. Hence the reason for this blog. I wanted to document the transition, and share it with whomsoever might find it useful, insightful, or entertaining. My Hour between the Wolf and the Dog is at hand.
The Hour between the Wolf and the Dog (between Darkness and Light)
Artist: Marc Chagall
Start Date: 1938
Completion Date:1943
Dimensions: 100 x 73 cm
Gallery: Private Collection
