I’m trying a couple of new things these days. Really different from anything I’ve done in a long time. Am I good at it? No. That is kind of the point. If I get it from the beginning and find myself moving ahead with effortless comfort and ease, then I’m not learning, am I?  I’m just rearranging stuff I already know.

This afternoon, I headed out to do some quick errands before putting on the party finery.  It started snowing around 2 and the snowfall is just getting heavier and heavier, sifting down in this windless stubborn powdery way. Along Logan, I was staring at the treetops and the white, white sky, and a Cooper’s hawk appeared out of nowhere, a gray long-tailed outline shooting across the boulevard and through the trees, straight through the trees, meticulously adjusting this angle, then that, at top speed. In a few seconds, it had gone ahead.

I may never be more than a pretty good amateur with these new things. I don’t know if I’ll get to the success part, where the intellectual jolts give way to the harmony of the whole, where with minimal effort I can meticulously tweak the wingspan at full speed ahead. But I am doing a bang up job with the fumbling.

Here comes 2014.