The New Year

This is the the year that I'll be getting in shape. I'll be doing P-90X while taking up marathons and joining every crossfit gym within a fifteen mile radius of my home.

I'm going to finish reading the guardian's old list of the top 100 novels ever. I'm beginning with In Search of Lost Time by Proust.

I'm going to be more forgiving this year. Hell, already I've forgiven myself for lying about reading Proust.

I'm going to fill out a lot of job applications this year, at least seven.

I'm going to stop complaining about things in less the weather is really crappy.

I'm going to write an epic poem, on the order of the Odyseey for all the things that I have loved in silence. I'm going to begin with the pale light of the moon and you.

I'm going to write a novel, beginning with the last chapter. In the end, he dies. That is not quite the first line.

I'm going to dress as if the clothes I wear are not an afterthought.

I'm going to lie about the way I'll probably dress.

I'm going to spend at least half the year complaining about how we never go to the zoo. And then, when we go to the zoo, I'm going to spend half the time complaining about how the zoo isn't as good as it should be.

I'm going to take up sculpting. I'm going to learn to read backwards. I'm going to sleep eight hours a night, stay up late to enjoy the last drought of the evening, and I'm going to wake up early to watch the first bits of red soaking into the eastern sky.

I'm going to write a salacious non-fiction book about my life as a stripper in the mid-eighties.

I'm going to invent a time machine and travel back the mid-eighties and probably do some stripping for artistic integrity, but don't worry, I'll exaggerate bits in the book.



I'm going to learn the names of trees, alder, white birch and birds nuthatch, rock dove, mourning dove.

I'm not going to watch an iota of television.

I'm going to watch all of the best television shows that I've never seen.

But it's late, and I'm tired, so I'll leave all of these things for another day. Hell, maybe another year. Perhaps it's not possible to do everything. Perhaps this year will be about finding one or two things that I can do better, meditate, read, call friends, laugh more frequently. Perhaps the year is not really about resolutions anyhow; perhaps, as time goes by, it is not a time for renewal, but a reminder that the sand in the hourglass does not fall forever. I know. I know. It is time for sleep, but that time always comes before I've done all the things I intended to do, Perhaps that's what this day will have in common with this year.

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