Happy New Year

David Foster Wallace:

A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.


My personal send off to the last ten years:

Goodbye to the aughts or the noughts or the noughties or whatever you'd like to call the past ten years. Remember when we were all scared about Y2K? Boy were we right. As you all know technology has seen a rapid decline in the ten years since computers shut down and banks lost all of our money. Oh wait, they did. Anyhow, a lot more significant stuff happened in my life like getting married and spending a summer living with sea lions. That second one is hazy because sea lions smoke a lot of dope. It's a little past 2 A.M. here, which makes coherence a bit of a challenge.

We drank some food. We had wine, warmed from the stove. After midnight we took off our clothes and walked out into the cold. We walked down the street in the freezing rain. We peered in darkened windows hoping to see pictures of the people we once were. In the morning the police lights chased us. We were wrapped in blankets and driven into the dark. We cried and asked for our mothers. The warm seats and bright lights reminded us of home. We found home to be a confusing idea. Ideas had proven too confusing anyway. Our fingers smelled of all the cigarettes we had never smoked.

In Korea, they celebrate each New Year as a birthday. We celebrated all the things we were leaving behind. We made New Year's resolutions to change everything. We bought gym memberships and stopped going after two months when the boss made us stay late. We finally asked out that girl at work who didn't know our name. We said to ourselves and to to the wine glasses in our hand, "This is going to be our year! This is going to be our decade!" No one was listening.

Later on that year, we were typing words into a blank white screen. We watched the words crawl like the webs of a spider. No, like ink spilled from a quill. No, like rain marking the snow white ground. No, we watched the words crawl across the screen and it was like nothing that had ever been seen before. We pretended, in the dark, that we were not alone. We rolled over and hugged our loved ones, who were deep in sleep. "In the morning I'll be different," we whispered to our various loves, our children and our lonely cats. Who meowed but seemed indifferent.

We dreamed this ever paling dream that Sartre was right, that we can turn it all around. We watched our lives from a distance, as if from on high. We were on a steady train, on a lonely track, rolling through the mountains. And if you looked closely enough, out beyond the steam on the window, we could finally see the people we once were. We tried to wave to ourselves, to warn of the dying pets, shovels, lost loves, and wasted afternoons of our future. But we could not hear.

"Nothing is going to change," we said, dipping a finger in the warm coffee that wakes us in the morning. And then we sit across from each other in a room of pale light, and sip, and stare at the rain, as if being silent long enough could change the world. You start to say something about resolutions, but I put a finger to your lips. This year, we are going to listen.