New Year's Project: Above the Vaulted Sky

Happy New Year. And now the question facing millions - what should I attempt to do this year? Those three words 'New Years Resolution' stand like evil, taunting goblins above my head because I'll let you in on a secret - I've never done it. Never completed a year with a little goal I set out with on the 1st January. All except that one year when I promised to read 100 books (I kind of did it, though I'm not sure if 150 page Hardy Boys mysteries and re-readings of Harry Potter should really count).

This year though, I come to you with a proposal: a page of a book, every day from now until the 31st December. It sounds easy. It sounds like the best idea I've ever had (I have these on average twice a day, usually at inconvenient times when, despite my abundant Apple devices and pretty notebooks, I have neither near me to jot). It sounds too good to be true.

As ever, the eternal optimist, I set out on my quest, to tell a story I've had bouncing around my head for many a year. We all have them; the ideas that sit in that dusty corner of your mind with that half finished copy of an oft-fussed-over classic novel and those shopping items you neglected to pick up at the supermarket. 

I'm not sure if my idea's original, I'm not sure if it's awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, or a tour-de-force like so many on the shelves these days, but it interests me, and I'm sure many will agree with me. The question being, what happens when we die? And what becomes important after that. 

I'll give you a little backstory. 

I have the world's biggest doorstop of a Romantic poetry anthology. (Than you Duncan Wu) While trying to avoid writing my 2nd year English essay on the Romantic big-guns, I stumbled across a poem. Now I'm not a massive fan of romantic poetry. I'll take AA Milne and Edward Lear any day over Byron or Wordsworth. 

I'm not even sure what 'I Am' by John Clare is really about. Do any of us really know what poets talk about? It's the beauty of the form I guess. While reading this poem though, lines jumped out at me. I'll let you read it for yourself - take it Mr Clare… (Feel free to skip if you're no great verse-lover)

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

                                                     John Clare

I thought: what if we became a memory. What if we were around to see our loved ones experience the memory of us. Most importantly, what if we died with a loved one. I'm sure, like me, if you woke up a spirit and felt no need to haunt, or show grumpy geezers the meaning of Christmas, you'd tear apart the universe to find them again. This is my story. And as mentioned, if you would allow me, it will be told to you a page at a time over the coming year. 

I have no plan, I have no names of characters, locations, drives, wants, favourite flavours of crisp or most beloved album. I have a poem, a title, a blog and 365 days to tell a story.

Wish me luck, I hope you enjoy:

Above the Vaulted Sky