Another year finished and another year in the making. I meander in my thoughts of my past this time of year, for obvious reasons, and as I've been (finally) getting older, it's amazing to me how much I've forgotten. Years I was in a long term relationship, traveling to distant lands with him, and I barely remember what we did, where we went, who we talked to, how we made love, or when we argued what we argued about. I only remember images of fields extending into mountains, architecture over bridges and streets, and people walking around me always, culturally different yet somehow all seeming the same and sometimes I remember feelings. But I traveled some after that relationship ended, were some of these images from those trips?
If a lifetime can be measured by lovers, it seems a blur of moments with them in city streets, in bedrooms, in hotels, in apartment complexes, spaces of lush color and liquid scenarios. If a lifetime can be measured in accomplishments, I have no idea what I've accomplished for how many years to this eve of another coming, as I'm at an all time low. Perhaps, there are better things to measure the years with. Like how many times you've seen the ocean.
If someone would tell me, after I say something of my life to them, that I've been through a lot- and maybe I have- it would be hard to discern in my face, as when I look in the mirror I see someone 10 yrs younger, rough nonetheless, but not through the gentle severity of age, but of madness, an ageless kind of rough underlying in the skin of someone who's large eyes are that of an animal in its prime, free and wild.
I know that when I'm serving how many strangers their champagne as the ball drops, drunk and silly, I'll be thinking about playing video games with my brothers, or firecrackers in the street high in the mountains, or being strung out and in a spanish styled town with movement towards Mexico. Some of my past new years, but I can't remember all of them. I can't remember all of them. I try, but can't. You should never have to try too hard. I can't remember all of them.
I remember last new year's eve, being too drunk to drive home, no friends to drive me, and laying in my car in a stupor, eventually resting, until the sun rose on new years day.
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try being MY age. i remember most vividly my new years celebrations as a young teen--parents away at a party, my brother and i "partying' with the neighbor kids. i still have some pics of us all in our jammies. new years was so exciting to me back then, but i was not sure why. it represented something, but i did not know what. now, it represents possibility--a blank year ahead. of course, most is predictable: the same job, the same apartment, the same friends, but then there is the magic possibility of songs unheard, love unexpressed, tears uncried, movies unwatched. i revel in these possibilities, because for 35 years (the time i have been aware of this idea), the years have never let me down. that is the second part of my celebration--a review of what i did/saw/heard/felt that i could not have anticipated. age, che, is measured in experience, not years. at least in my book. which means that you and i are very old men. but dammit if we don't look fucking fantastic.
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