It’s a little past New Year’s Eve, maybe a day or two now, and the resolutions are all tucked safely away into some still-distant future, hell, after a few too many on a Saturday night, Monday’s still light years away, right?
I don’t want to think about Monday and the diet and the no wine and the pandemic pounds I need to lose, and I don’t want to think about the batshit crazy things that might happen next week.
The kids, even the one that’s already twenty-two, Sweet Jesus, when the fuck did that happen, but anyway, all of them seem to have cashed in for the night, and, considering it’s only 12:15, well, miracles never cease, do they?
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1:00 now, just back after sneaking in one last pre-resolution smoke and one last pre-resolution four pack of Flower Power IPA. Been down to a half pack a week for a few years now and swearing on Monday we start getting that down to none a week.
Pull a frosted mug from the freezer, crack the tab on one of those Flower Powers, pour it in, and sit back down.
Turn on a tune from the old days.
“Goodbye” by Steve Earle.
Remember years and years ago, writing on these very same pages here, something about Lauren buying me this album for Christmas, and walking around Buckingham Pond through the early stages of the Christmas 2002 storm listening to this on my portable CD player, and about how the last words I ever said to her that I knew with certainty she could hear, as they wheeled her away from me down a hallway toward an operating room, were, “Goodbye, Lauren.”
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I don’t want to think about Monday, I don’t want to think about the future.
The end of the republic looms closer than at any time since 1860. The injustices still reign supreme, all these years later.
Lauren’s still dead, and now my father is too.
There is so much to regret and so much to fear in this sweet old world that it is a fucking miracle any of us do anything more than get out of bed and get dressed in the morning, but thankfully people with far more courage and imagination than I manage to do that.
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I got the lights off now, and the harmonica blows and the strings sing, and I look out the window, out across the street.
My mom’s house, not my parents’ house now, but my mom’s house, and on the porch, a Christmas tree with white lights, and on the wall next to it a wreath in white lights.
Just outside my window, the pine bush out in the front, soaked in white lights.
And just to my left, a perfectly shaped Christmas tree, soaked in multi-colored lights, and decorated with ornaments given to us by my mother, by Lauren, by Sheila.
We’re taking it down tomorrow.
I just want to stare at the lights a little longer.
I’m gonna die soon. We’re all gonna die soon.
There’s only so many moments of magic we have left.
There’s so much wrong, so much to do.
There’s resolutions and promises to keep.
There’s a fucked up sweet old world that needs fixing, and only those of us with soft-enough hearts are tough enough to do it.
There’s too much to do, and not enough time to do it, but now it’s 1:30 in the morning and I figure, there’s always tomorrow.
Right now I just wanna stare at all these lights, have another drink, and drift off into the sort of sleep where all the ones you miss come back to visit for a minute or two.