resolution, after a fashion 

resolution, after a fashion

being unable to walk into the woods today, as is my new year habit, and muse and marinate my resolutions, i will hold out for their blossoming at some later date.

meanwhile i stumbled upon this poem in an old new yorker, and although (despite having read it five times) i am not completely clear what it means, i pretty much think it applies to me, and is nudging me resolutely in some direction.

i have no permission to reprint so please go straight out and buy something this man has written-- i will--
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Paradiso

There is no way not to be excited
When what you have been disillusioned by raises its head
From its arms and seems to want to talk to you again.
You forget home and family
And set off on foot or in your automobile
And go to where you believe this form of reality
May dwell. Not finding it in there, you refuse
Any further contact
Until you are back again trying to forget
The only thing that moved you (it seems) and gave you what you
forever will have
But in the form of a disillusion.
Yet often, looking toward the horizon
There???inimical to you????is that something you have never found
And that, without those who came before you, you could have never
imagined.
How could you have thought there was one person who could make you
Happy and that happiness was not the uneven
Phenomenon you have known it to be? Why do you keep believing in this
Reality so dependent on the time allowed it
That it has less to do with your exile from the age you are
Than from everything else life promised that you could do?

---Kenneth Koch