In Santa Fe, Zozobra has just burned. Old Man Gloom, that gawky paper effigy that figures large in the mythologies of the myth-ridden place that is my Santa Fe, and with him all the woes and cares of the year.
I should have made a bonfire of all my old papers too—the ones I've been sorting and throwing out for weeks. Bags carried heavily to the recycling bin somehow don't have or give the same visceral satisfaction of a good, bright, cleansing fire. The liberating lightness of old outworn words gone up in smoke and ash.
But they are gone, nevertheless, and my heart feels much the lighter for it. Maybe best of all would be to fold each page or scrap into a little paper boat boasting spinnaker sails, and send them all off on a wayward current, a light-struck chuckling stream, carrying unplanned messages from past to future, to unsuspecting readers not looked for, who will find them downstream somewhere, tangled in a brief snag of watercress or log-jam of tiny waterbirch cones, humming from their journey, as some kind of happy chance, some kind of serendipity.
image: Shifa Naseer, Paper Boats
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