One year in the life of us all
November 25, 2001 ~ 9:53 a.m.
Holy crapola, is the year nearly done already? Incredible. It seems like just a month ago that I was helping my brother-in-law shovel and plow from the result of a blizzard that dumped more than a foot of snow. But, actually, it was eight months ago.
It seems like only days ago that I was working on my tan, but now the lawn on which I sunbathed is wet and mushy and surrounded by trees in the advanced state of leaf-fall. The weather is cool to cold. It was a brilliant summer, but did three months just pass by like that?
I have been home (Boston) and to Barcelona twice and Paris once. I did a lot of travelling to be sure, but now it feels as if all these trips occurred in a vacuum.
Football season segued into baseball season and right back into football season. It's easy to follow a year by the sports cycle; the solar and lunar cycles are more scientific, but sports are more fun.
I'm still feeling my body's attempts at digesting Thanksgiving Day dinner and during my morning runs (to help aid said digestion, no doubt), Christmas lights blink and sparkle. They're everywhere, strapped to the sides of houses, or hanging in huge candy-cane or reindeer shaped clusters from streetlamp poles. I'm still trying to deal with the holiday overload from last year, and here it comes again! Christmas only comes once a year? Well, thank you God, because any more than that and we'd never get a break from it!
We're at year's end. The year has only five weeks left. Think about that. Five weeks left of 2001, a year that none of us will see again, unless there's some retro movement ten to twenty years from now. The only problem with that scenario is that we're so busy now reliving the '60s, '70s, a bit of the '80s and even the early '90s that there's hardly anything unique about the entertainment or lifestyle scene. Like our paper and glass, our culture is made from recycled materials.
I grew up looking forward to this year, eager to take a peek at what it would be like. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey has much to answer for. I'm disappointed. There was really nothing special about it. It was just another year.
Excepting, of course, for the the horror of September 11. Aren't we, in fact, glad to see it go? It's remarkable how just one day out of 365 can taint a whole year, but no-one will look back fondly at 2001. Most of us will cringe. My grandmother's generation probably doesn't look too kindly upon the years 1929 and 1941 either (years of the Stock Market Crash and the Pearl Harbor attack, respectively). They look back and say "those were bad years"; we can, and probably will, say the same for this year.
I don't have a New Year's Wish, I have an Old Year's Wish: Let these last five weeks drift by peacefully. Quietly. Even happily. Let them segue into 2002 the way football season segues into baseball, the way spring segues into summer. Let us have a break.
� M.E.M.
|
[Sign My Guestbook]
[View My Guestbook]
|
Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
AMERICA FOR TRUE AMERICANS!