Reset Thirty-Seven, Day Twenty-Four
Friday missed becoming the first New Year's Eve since I was a kid that I slept through midnight. I had awoken from an essential evening nap not long after eleven, but still feeling tired and enjoying the warm covers I dozed off again. Then somebody set off a loud firecracker nearby and I woke up thinking, oh, it must be midnight, but it turned out to only be 11:53, so I got up and made a screwdriver (because waking up=orange juice and New Year's Eve=booze) and went into the chilly back yard to listen to the racket.
It was noisier than my previous three years in the mini-metropolis, and certainly noisier than my nearly a third of a century in wooded backwater, but it all seemed less celebratory than desperate. Maybe it was just me, but it sounded as though everyone were trying to deny the inevitability of decay and loss. It felt like it was not only a calendar year that was gone, but an entire civilization. The horns and bells and fireworks and shouts were like echoes from a world that doesn't know it has vanished. As the sounds gradually faded, leaving the night punctuated by only and occasional pop, I grew too cold and went back indoors to a room where nothing had changed and nothing would ever be the same again.
It was noisier than my previous three years in the mini-metropolis, and certainly noisier than my nearly a third of a century in wooded backwater, but it all seemed less celebratory than desperate. Maybe it was just me, but it sounded as though everyone were trying to deny the inevitability of decay and loss. It felt like it was not only a calendar year that was gone, but an entire civilization. The horns and bells and fireworks and shouts were like echoes from a world that doesn't know it has vanished. As the sounds gradually faded, leaving the night punctuated by only and occasional pop, I grew too cold and went back indoors to a room where nothing had changed and nothing would ever be the same again.