39/52

[emelbe]

This year the Asian Art Museum brought in a bell.  Short version: ring the bell to rid yourself of last year’s awfulness. Longer version: On December 31, they let 108 (groups of) people ring that bell to shed the year’s badness, to let things go. I had a good year. I had a really good year. I mean, just look at the last eight months of this blog. But I am not the only person in my life and a lot of my friends, a lot of my loved ones, have had really sincerely fucked up years. So I went.

I didn’t ring it because I didn’t need to but I went to stand witness. It was beautiful and it was glorious and I am not using any sort of artistic license  or hyperbole when I tell you that it nearly brought me both to my knees and to tears.

…

There’s this superstition that the way you spend New Years, that three seconds spanning from 11:59:59 to 00:00:01, is somehow indicative of how you will spend the following year. Begin as you mean to end it. I like that. I’ve given that some amount of credence, even if I know it’s self-fulfilling.

For the last umpty years, I’ve spent New Year’s on my own, on the couch, in comfy clothes, with a carefully-chosen book. I was with someone for a number of those years but we were usually in different time zones come the fireworks. Go on ahead and talk to me about the importance of NYE kisses. I’ll wait. I can’t remember the last one I had and I designed it that way. It was how I chose to be. It was how I wanted to be. It was how I wanted to be for the next year and I made it happen, plus or minus.

This year, I didn’t manage to finish the book before the book I had carefully chosen as my New Years read before the Big Day.

And so it begins.

I went out for a dinner. That’s unusual. I usually cook for myself. I had some superficial interactions that were aaaaalmost not… and then were. I had some deeper interactions. And after everyone who didn’t work there and who wasn’t a regular left, we kept talking and—drinking or no—my guard was already down whether they realized it or not and it would’ve been so easy to stay. But at 11:45, I pardoned myself.

"Y’all are great and I love you but I have a date with a couch, some sweats and East of Eden.”

So I left. To… to what? To preserve my tradition? To “predict” 2014? To solidify the theme for 2014 in my head? And I rushed. I rushed. There were no cabs. There were no busses. I was maybe twenty minutes out by foot and I had fifteen minutes until midnight so I rushed.

And fuck

that

rushing.

I was in a park near my home when the fireworks went off and people started yelling. There were horns. There was a small amount of good-natured screaming. I stopped on purpose in that liminal space between nurturing friends and manufactured privacy. I stood and looked across this beautiful goddamned city I live in and I breathed the fresh air and I let the moment happen and it was the most chaotic and peaceful I’ve ever been, all at once.

It was nearly 2am before I read another paragraph of East of Eden.

There is probably a lot more to say about that and what all this means (because I’ve decided it means… it?) but right now all I can see is that one transcendent moment between the chaos and the acceptance and if that is what 2014 has to offer me then I accept that moment as predictive.

I accept the roller coaster.

Please excuse the inevitable shrieking.

…

This is 39/52. 38 will need to wait a little while. It’ll make sense when I actually post 38.