I am thinking about Nietzsche's stirring words from The Gay Science today because aren't the occasions of new years, whether solar, lunar or personal, so often focused on a desire for refreshed commitment to self-shaping? There's a lovely image of emergence described in his lyrical prose which I am going to take some liberties with:
From . . . abysses . . . ,This being the Year of the Snake, I call to mind images of the spiral or the labyrinth and, though still wrapped up in layers of winter-clothing, I think of ways to increase vitality in the act of shedding. What deeper freedoms might I encounter as my spirit becomes more ticklish?
one returns
newborn,
having shed one's skin
more ticklish . . .
with a more delicate taste
for joy
with a tenderer tongue
for all good things
with merrier senses
with a second dangerous innocence in joy
more childlike
yet a hundred times subtler than
one
has
ever
been
before.
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