Well, that's that then

Here it is. A pale and mottled corpse-eater crouching on the still-slumbering chest of the week, picking its spotted nose and glaring at us from beneath its gnarled and flaking brows: the last Monday of the year. Come Friday morning, what is arguably one of the the largest piles of worm-ridden feces ever to masquerade as a decade will be over.¹

Early on it gave us catastrophic mass murder in New York (I had front row seats for that), then birthed two wars which have yet to wind down (I chose not to attend), and finally ended with a near-total collapse of the economy that wiped out the entirety of its bubbling gains (I invested after the pop so that I could be a voracious capitalist profiting from the misery of others and among the first against the wall when the revolution comes).²

During this decade I choked on corpse dust, bought and sold a house, pedaled around the country on a recumbent tricycle, and relocated from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, returning to the city of my birth after a 33-year absence. I acquired many books, several pedal-powered vehicles, four synthesizers, a like number of guitars, two trumpets, a mandolin, and a home recording studio. I drank a lot--to wash some of the aforementioned dust from my throat, at first--then I stopped. My mother was diagnosed with a chronic, progressive, multisyllabic disease, which means I'll be staying where I am for several years, until Science!™ produces a cure (not bloody likely) or the inevitable (quite certain).

So over the course of ten years I've arced from an impersonal experience of mass death to an intimate experience of singular physiological decline. In the middle there was travel and adventure. All accented throughout by certain baubles hung within a weave of what I persist in calling creative malaise. People who are not me can algebraically attribute such perceived stagnation to the difference between creative ambition and actual output, and be happy about solving the equation. I use that unpleasant math as a sort of motivation, although I'm sure there are other ways that are healthier for the mind and more effective at increasing productivity.

As for positives, towards the end of this decade I started making eggnog from scratch.³ I focused more on my writing and got my first publications since Home Planet News published "Where We Met" in 1995. I made some mindless pop. If I squint real hard, the index card-covered cork board in front of my face resolves into the blurry shape of something that vaguely resembles a novel. Depending on the day, I'm halfway convinced that I can actually produce such a thing, and that other people might want to read it. In general my clothing looks good, although it'd be swell if there was less of me to put into it.

Overall? There is a myriad of small things within my control. That glimmering constellation is easily overwhelmed by the world-bending things that are entirely beyond my influence. Jihad and illness occupy the opposing global and living room ends of the uncontrollable events spectrum. But as with almost all such things, their most fearsome aspects belong to the past and future. The towers have tumbled, but that azure Tuesday morning is over four million minutes in the past. The end result of an idiopathic Fuck You from the universe to my mother will take place at some unknown point in the future. Today, I watched The Incredibles at her house. I drank eggnog and made a ridiculous burrito out of leftover turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy.⁴

And that's enough, for now. I have hope that the next ten years will be an improved and creatively inspired arbitrary span of time for myself and the world. But hope belongs to the future, so right here and at this moment I am going to go into the kitchen, get a paper towel, and discreetly mop up the bit of cranberry sauce that fell onto the living room rug.

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¹Although, to be fair, for me personally 1340-1350 wasn't much better. It started out fine enough with Edward III getting to be King and all that, but the Great Pestilence at the end kind of ruined it for me. That, and a certain syphilitic Florentine bitch who turned out not to be a Medici cousin at all and made waiting 600 years or so for Fleming to notice Penicillium notatum an absolute joy.

²And all of that was just for our first world entertainment. Among numerous other frivolities elsewhere, the Indian ocean turned reaper and killed nearly 100 times the number of those who lost their lives on September 11. But I wasn't there, so its tsunamic horror was filtered through the media and my own trauma-induced myopia.

³Through the magic of bloggery, I went and got some of that decadent stuff and am drinking it right now. I would totally give you a glass but TCP/IP does not currently have a Nog Layer. That said, this Christmas I made a kind of Frankenog by combining two previous recipes and the results, though properly rich and heart healthy, aren't the best example of my nog artistry. So maybe we'll have better nog together next year.

⁴Which is fantastic. Again, sorry: no Burrito Layer. Otherwise there would be sharing, because I like you well enough to give you eggnog and burritos.