December 31, 2007

Obsequies for 2007

Remember when years measured the time between Christmases and birthdays?
A year was 4 summers.
A year was a new notch on the doorway, your height scribbled nearby.
A new year felt new because
A year was everything.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Endless.

On television the crowds in Tokyo and Paris would smile, and cheer, and kiss while we waited...
In Times Square the ball would drop at eleven o’clock.
This was the burden of living in Central Time.
The hour between eleven and twelve would crawl slower and ever slower....
Fighting sleep.
Until those last seconds.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 3, 2, and then...
A dive into the unknown.

We would write out the new year because it felt weird to see it in ink.
In a year we could learn geometry, the stories of Athena and Apollo, and how to catch catfish on rainy days.
In a year we might fall in and out of love 20 times.
In a year we might kiss a girl. With tounge.
In a year we had time to build forts in trees.
A year was something.

Does the calendar change anything now?
Wasn’t it just... Wait. That was 4 years ago.
My favorite winter overcoat is six years older than some of my friends.
I return to places and find trees I planted towering above the rooftops.
I see someone else in the mirror.
Birthdays mean nothing to me.
I’ve forgotten how to measure things.

posted at 04:53 AM by raul

Filed under: night musings

TAGS: 5am thoughts (1) a year (1) time (25)

Comments:

12/31/07 10:53 AM

Heh. Central time. Yeah. New years are a strange thing for me. My memory only goes back a year and a half or two from any given moment, so new years for me don't measure what might happen in the future, but was is lost from my past.

12/31/07 11:58 AM

There's a good reason I keep coming back here year after year and it's writing like this. May your New Years be lovely and here's to hoping you get a nice midnight kiss. With tongue! :)

01/31/08 11:50 AM

You are an incredibly good writer. Thanks for publishing these thoughts.

02/06/08 02:02 PM

mmm speaking of time and years... I've just bought a book called "33 years" by Nicholas Nixon. He took one portrait of 4 sisters every year during thirty-three years.

The laps of time is enough to see a real difference between starting point and end point, but when you watch the pictures quickly one after another, you don't really see a difference....

I've found this link : http://www.zabriskiegallery.com/Nixon/TBS/nixonimages.htm

photography is a good thing, to measure things... and time. :-)

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