Wednesday, January 01, 2003
The first morning of 2003. The first gray morning of 2003. I know I'm not the only one who, especially on New Year's Day, has stopped to think, "How the fuck did I ever live this long?" Has it always been that way, or is it something from the seventies and eighties, this sense of impending death? That the future can't really be there, that the thought alone is just too surreal to contemplate. No future. I hope I die before I get old. You know the tune. Except, instead of being an affirmation, it's a weird sort of premonition, beginning perhaps at puberty. A dread of becoming our parents? The thought alone to unreal, unthinkable, unfathomable, like trying to hold the concept of eternity in a thought. The brain skips like a scratchy record (you know, a record, those old-fasioned vinyl things?) and resists the possibility. And then, one day, it's 1999. Or 2000. Or, worse still, 2003, and there's no getting around the obvious. We're mired in this time stuff like flies in amber, like a mastodon in warm tar. If you struggle, it'll only make things worse. And slowly, it grows harder around us, sealing us in, keeping us, like a certain moment, or a nostalgic odor, except, unlike the amber or the tar, it never quite solidifies completely. It continues the flow, unceasingly, dragging us helplessly along for the ride.
Anyway, Happy New Years,
My work has sat neglected since Sunday, when Spooky finally arrived from Rhode Island. Tomorrow, I have to force myself to get back to That Which Must Be Written. I announced at breakfast this morning that my New Year's Resolution was to write another damned book. I figure that's a fairly safe one. I did write the patch for page 22, panels 6 and 7 of Bast #3, on Sunday. I need to e-mail the revised preface to Bill Schafer, and the edited manuscript of TFoC. But, mostly, I need to begin the new novel. All else falls by the wayside. It's the only thing which can be allowed to truly matter.
Last night, Kathryn and I watched Wendigo and listened to fireworks going off. We also watched some video she'd done in 1993, which was strange but charming. It was pay back, as I'd let her watch a Death's Little Sister show on video the night before. Tonight I think we're all going to see Gangs of New York.
2003. Wow. The show must go on . . .
(cue music, title credits)
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