Fire Horses and Snake Skins

Today is the Lunar New Year—
or maybe Chinese New Year.
I don’t really know the differences, other than they are not the same, though they coincide.

I didn’t know much about it at all until my very knowledgeable and worldly friend Thib invited me to dinner tonight.
That, and Instagram has flooded my algorithm with quotes about the significance of this new year ever since I was invited.

Apparently, we’re leaving the year of the wood snake.
Old things are shed.

And we’re moving into the year of the fire horse, which is a rare sign in astrology.
It represents the fire and courage of new choices and of life-altering decisions. Of dynamic shifts that change the course of the path ahead.

Pivots. Action. Boldness.

Today is associated with luck and hope of good things to come.
It was a good thing to attend, as I haven’t felt as hopeful lately.

Luck is a mindset, you know?
You’re supposed to think, “I am lucky,” and somehow reprogram your brain to search for things in the world, and in your life, that affirm that truth.

Heartache doesn’t really allow much space for that, though, does it?
It doesn’t feel like fire and courage and the belief in the dynamic, good, new things in store.

No—

It feels like sitting in a rowboat with no oars.
Endlessly gliding into a deeply heavy purple horizon.
A horizon where sky and water seem to never meet—
nor end.

A seamless gliding through the dark water beneath an unguiding sky.
Sometimes I feel stuck in that glide.
Like I’m sailing toward a daybreak that won’t come.

But I guess all dawns feel that way, don’t they?
In the dark before the light crests and heralds the turn of a new day.

fire horses and wood snakes—
a lesser mind would think, “Pokémon.”

Thib would tell me, “We’re not negative today. We don’t carry that forward into the new year.”
I’m sure she’s right.

I dunno.

As for me, a fire rabbit born beneath a waning moon 38 years ago—

Maybe I’ll just glide forward a bit more.

Just glide through a sea of endless black glass.

Gliding—

so the fire horse can teach me to run.