As the Dateline Glides Inexorably On

I was watching the New Year celebrations on CNN yesterday, and there were fireworks going off in Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Berlin, London, New York, Key West and Los Angeles. Here, people release a cloud of silver balloons that spiral up past the reaching towers. There, confetti rains down from the astronomical rooftops. Everywhere people throwing colour up into the night sky. And I think to myself, that I will be there come August. I will be there. It's an amazing thought.

Christmas is the more special time for me, but the New Year is more widely celebrated. And inasmuch as its arbitrariness allows everyone from every denomination to celebrate the passage of time, it is a greater outpouring of warmth, a greater enhancement to that generalised humanistic fellow-feeling. And what it must be like to be at Times Square when the crystal ball reaches the earth. When the future reaches us and becomes now. And what it must be like to be there with a companion or two, so that that generalised humanistic fellow-feeling is sharpened by its crystallisation in a corporeal form, making a philosophy meaningful. Is this a resolution? Perhaps...

And I never bothered to find out what Auld Lang Syne really means until this year. It was just ritualistic gibberish with a nice melody, serving a similar function as a Latin hymn, I guess. But it turns out that the nonsensical interpretation I had always had was just a result of misunderstood grammar and punctuation. "Should all acquaintance be forgot/ And never brought to mind" is a question, and a rhetorical one at that. And to sing to the times of old on New Year's Day - doesn't it strike you as somehow poetically appropriate? It's a ritual that puts things into perspective, and as we look forward upon boundless possibility in a new year, we also remember that this possibility is grounded in the context of the past.

*

I realise that the last few days most of my contact with other people has taken place online. It's nice, of course, to talk to people from far away and imagine what it's like to be sitting at that transcontinental computer terminal. And receiving long, well-written letters has always sent a chill down my spine. It's nice that people still put in effort to write nowadays, in the age of SMS and webchat. But what I really want is some company, you know? A real person to talk to, and a real context in which to talk. An imagined setting in cyberspace may be more poetic and idyllic, but it is so clinical in its exactitude and malleability. Better to contend with real space, and within the limitations of the real circumstances, to be surprised to find that improbable intersection of factors that produces perfection.

And been making plans for my 21st for my family, and it's becoming a real headache. I realise it doesn't take much for me to become irritated by organisation. When it starts to become pretentious, when it becomes clear that planning doesn't create a catalyst but an impedence to spontaneity. And it's a delicate balancing-act to get it right. I daresay I'll be happier once this affair is over. Honestly, if not for the general expectation that the 21st must be significant, I wouldn't go through all this trouble.

*

But first - going off soon, in about three hours' time. A new journey awaits, and it feels good to be finally going somewhere again. Movement, velocity - these will save me from a preposition towards rumination. And one last sojourn with Soph, and one last sojourn for the winter, before normal life begins again. One last flash of Elsewhere - and I am eager to get started.