Every New Year’s Eve even I’m reminded that, according to Chinese astrology, I came into existence during the year of the Rat. I know I grew up in the West, and that Chinese New Year and our New Year are celebrated in a much different fashion, but the two are inextricably linked. Perhaps it’s because when my family would return from our yearly California Christmas trips around New Year's Eve, we’d get take-out Chinese food when we got home, usually first thing. The restaurants always gave us holiday sheets that presented the years of the Chinese Zodiac and I’d feel a sense of pride when I saw “1996” and “Rat” next to each other. My sweet and sour chicken tasted almost holy on those very cold holiday nights. 

My existence as the bearer of the spirit of the rat: it’s much better than the Greek analog I fall under; Scorpions frighten me. Although I know next to nothing about the rat in Chinese culture, I envy its status as an iconic animal. In the West it is a pest for understandable reasons. But there’s a stoic beauty to the survivability of the rat and a harsh beauty to how such a small and unknowing creature could be the harbinger of destitution and death through the Bubonic plague. [Just now I went to fact-check if rats actually carried the Bubonic plague, and there is now debate over the topic, but I’ll choose to believe rats were the main carriers and move on with my life; this is very irresponsible behavior on my part and should not be emulated.]

As 2024 comes around the corner I can’t get the words of Wordsworth out of my head: “little we see in Nature that is ours.” There is very little mysticism left—even as I try to discover what it means to be born under the sign of the rat my post-modern-post-enlightenment brain keeps insisting I remember that that is nothing but antiquated cultural understandings of symbols, time, and personhood. What’s left for us? The two alternatives it seems are to carry on with our logical heads held high, or else to regress into silly pseudo-paganisms. Both of these are popular options. The latter even tempted Wordsworth at the end of the previously quoted poem:

“I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.”

Despite protestations from our higher intellect (whatever that means), humans are good at keeping two contrary ideas in their heads at once. Of late I’m fascinated by how many distrust media, and yet share their distrust through media, using media to support their beliefs. My New Year’s resolution is to perform the greatest paradox of all: live in the world as if it were the most beautiful and wonderful place imaginable, while also acknowledging that it is altogether pretty terrible. When I consider the great martyrs of history, from Socrates to Jesus to Martin Luther King, I see a striking pattern: the world is beautiful, and God is with us, but the imposed structures of humans in power undo the whole project. Instead of reveling in the natural world like children in a garden, we are 

“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

We’ve given away our hearts, and our connection to nature, for dominion over nature. Dominion over nature brings many things, medicine, shelter, and the illusion of order. Good things that are often abused. “Getting and spending,” the great curse of dominion. 

And so I am reminded of Blake, who declares that “Jesus his seventy disciples sent / To destroy religion and government.” Talk about a paradox. The human construct of the Rat overseeing the year 1996 is false yet rooted in truth too nebulous for me to discern in my current, unenlightened state.

In practical terms, then, I guess my New Year’s resolution is to go for more walks or something. Connect to nature and all that commodified Headspace bullshit rooted in eternal truths. Perhaps I’ll do a nice thing for my neighbors who scream at the top of their lungs while playing Fortnite and blasting Deftones at 3 AM. Maybe it’s to keep being a teacher even though I know nothing I alone can do will fix the societal problems that weigh me down as I encounter them on a daily basis. 

Or maybe it’s to remember the capital-R. Rat, that intelligent animal of Chinese folklore, and emulate its craftiness, its dedication to life in all its scurrying shit-covered claustrophobic glory.