How to Get From There to Here.

As a student of literature and story, I sometimes find it difficult to separate the narratives on which my studies depend and the reality I continually create and inhabit. As a result, the experiences of my life often make the most sense when I contextualize them into an arc, a patterned tale prescribing the necessary beginning, middle, and end on which I so often depend to understand my plight.

And one does not need to study literature to do this to the details of the world. Perhaps the strongest example, I feel, is our seemingly universal adherence to the notion that the calendar's change somehow prescribes for us some form of renewal. The clock strikes twelve and, like magic, January has manifested itself before you, optimistic and cordial, ready to lead you into the hopeful promise of brighter tomorrows.

The anticipation for newness begins the fermentation process somewhere in the doldrums of March. By the time the hope dramatically suds to the surface of your chosen champagne glass, it's hard not to arrest your own emotional effervescences and give in to the legend of the changeover story.

I invested in the grand narrative pretty heavily around 2000. My chums and I, all juiced on adolescent fancy, Bicardi Limon, and a spritz of Cool Water, braved the freezing winter temperatures and walked the streets in South Lake Tahoe among many a throng of equally bitter revelers. My buds and I clung to each other, refusing to acknowledge the fear that any separation would remind us of the loneliness one inevitably feels when trying to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of an otherwise hollow moment.

I enjoyed recounting the details of this aimless experience in South Lake Tahoe. With each retelling, I described the blonde strangers strung across my mates and me, perhaps even offering proof in the form of pictures developed from the then ubiquitous disposable cameras. The New Year story was good then. But like all good things... with just two or three years further experience under my belt, I realized that South Lake Tahoe, on New Year's Eve, is really just an seedy barroom expanded across Highway 50 at the state line. Then the pictures just invoked an awkward moment--an isolated moment where emotionally isolated people forced themselves to mix and mingle.

Oil, meet Water. You two get along now. See if you have anything in common.

I grew tired of the dependence for something new on New Year's around '05. I spent my time catering to those out living their own New Year's stories, lubing their plots with booze--at a bar, appropriately--and eventually driving home a number of my on-the-town friends once the lights went out. I was had locked into the band Death Cab for Cutie at the time, and I remember how, as if by design, the song "The New Year" came on as I carted the partiers home.

So this is the new year / And I don't feel any different.
The clanking of crystal / Explosions off in the distance
So this is the new year / And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance / For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogs bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that could hold us back.

The 2004-2005 stretch for me is characterized by a lot of analysis, and the notion of a singular narrative--a singular anything, actually--fell to exhaustive scrutiny. As such, I found the above song a brilliant anthem against the fabricated belief that December 31 and January 1 embody some fall line of great import. I thought it a testament to the inherent absurdity we all allow ourselves to succumb to in accepting a dominant narrative over the tangible reality before us.

I mention all of this (at unfortunate length), to emphasize my current acceptance of this annual event in the context of my life. Now, I no longer strain my eyes and brain to remain alert until midnight. I refuse to seek out the event or the experience or the people that will somehow set the proverbial tone for the year to come. And so on Saturday night, as another lovely evening bled into a typically late (10:00 PM) hour, I spent my moments the way I spend most of my moments: I enjoyed good food, good wine, and the good company of the woman I love.

What possible improvement is there to find in a life bubbling over with such advantages?

So this is the new year. And I have no resolutions.

Post Script:

There's never a January 2nd that comes when I don't think of my great grandma Irma or her daughter, my grandma Judy. It wouldn't make sense to offer such blathering nonsense an neglect to acknowledge both their presences. That's it. Cheers.