And so another Christmas has passed.  The twenty-sixth of December.  Just another day.  Yet the New Year approaches.  Time to look back on the year that was, make the lists and debate over the most memorable moments, the greatest achievements, the best movies, the worst commercials.  A seemingly collective effort not to forget, to ensure some shared memory of what has actually passed, and which is now fading like a dream, is somehow captured, made permanent and enduring.  A time, too, of looking forward, to ponder one’s resolution for the new year, the one thing not to drag along into the future.  We humans are always so busy looking backwards and forwards.  Forwards and backwards.  Busy. Busy. Busy

Of course, the moment we have chosen to mark the end of one year and the beginning of another is arbritrary.  The appointed day to mark that we have moved around the sun one time.  The next Chinese New Year will be February 3.   The Year of the Rabbit.  To most of Americans, just another day. 

This morning I wake up and go outside to have a cigarette.  I am visiting my parents for the holidays and so I sit and stare out pass the evergreens and leafless trees of Whidbey Island over Saratoga Passage at Camano Island.  There are a few birds sqwaking, the wind is making a slight murmur with the trees, but otherwise things are quiet.  For the moment the sky above is clear, although there are plenty of clouds all along the periphery.  It is chilly, but not bitter cold.  It will probably rain in a few hours.  A typical Northwest winter day.

Almost eleven years ago, I was in very similar situation.  Except I was on Camano Island looking over at the Passage at Whidbey.  The morning of January 1, 2000.  Some friends had gathered at a cabin (owned by someone’s parents) for a couple of days of serious drinking.  We had no phone, no radio.  Cut off so to speak from civilization. The mission we would say in jest was to dive into a boozy haze as the world plunged into the chaos that would be Y2K. 

Midnight came and passed.  Nothing.  Just another night among the dark trees.

That morning I sat with the only other person awake (everyone else passed out in variously placed sleepingbags throughout the small cabin), smoked cigarettes and drank.  Like this morning, only a few birds were about chirping and squealing.  Like this morning, there was no sound that could be attributed to the world of humans.  She joked that we were the only ones who remained.  I laughed and pointed out the houses on Whidbey across the water.  The traces left behind to remind us that once there were others here.

A glitch in a computer program had made us the last ones.

And human time moved forward, and we continued to smoke, and drink, we waited for something to prove us wrong.  A boat moving along the Passage, a plane overhead, the sound of a car passing on the road up the dirt driveway.  Nothing.  Just those birds.  It was getting a little creepy.  (I would say that slipping into paranoia is made a litte easier by indulging in two straight days of drinking.)

Some of the others inside the cabin began to stir.  We needed supplies: tomato juice, some sandpaper, and tampons.  So my smoking companion and I jumped into one of the cars and headed to the general store, down the two lane road.  The only car on the road cutting through the evergreens.  Then…another car passed us going in other direction.  We both made exaggerated sighs of relief and laughed.  Just another day.

[Update of sorts: Since it seems that this has been the only blog posted today, and today being just being another day, feel free to treat this as an open thread.  Whatever is on your mind and want to make a comment about, even if doesn't have anything to do whatsoever with my blog (even though all things are somehow connected). 

Some questions that have come up in my mind, which has to do with resolutions.  These are generally treated as a personal thing. something we do as individuals that we may or may not share with others.  But if we were do a New Year's Resolution as an American nation, what would it be?  How would we phrase it so we could get everyone to buy into it voluntarily?  Should it be something we could realistically achieve? or should we seek something aspirational which would, even though we failed, push to something better?]