Archives for December 31, 2019

Mrs. T and I were in truly dire straits a year ago today, enough so that I tremble now to remember what we were going through. Alas, things have been just as bad for us in recent weeks, but we now seem—at least for the moment—to be back to our customary state of waiting and hoping for the best.

As a result, what I posted on this day in 2018 seems identically relevant now: “We may not have had a Christmas tree this year, but we had each other, and still do and always will. Placed next to that shining reality, nothing else matters in the least.” That’s still true, right down to the Christmas tree we didn’t have for the second year in a row, and it doesn’t even matter that we’re in upper Manhattan instead of our beloved Sanibel, Florida. The point is that we’re together, and there’s no place better for two people in love to be.

Such being the case, allow me to quote Ogden Nash, as is my longstanding custom on the last day of the year:

Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.

Tonight’s December Thirty-First,
Something is about to burst.

The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.

Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.

If, like me, you have a sneaking suspicion that chance is in the saddle and rides mankind, then I hope the year to come treats you not unkindly, and that your lives, like mine, will be warmed by hope and filled with love—and if you feel otherwise, then I wish for you the very same thing. We all deserve to be loved on New Year’s Eve.

From 2004:

The last sound I heard before I got in my rental car this morning and headed for the Smalltown city limits was a train whistle. My brother tells me that more freight trains have been passing through Smalltown lately, and though the tracks are halfway across town from my mother’s house, you can still hear the whistles loud and clear. My mother thinks they sound mournful, but I never thought so. They used to make me curious about the big world somewhere down the track, and now that I live in that big world, they remind me that I have things to do back there.

Read the whole thing here.

“Those who lack humour are without judgement and should be trusted with nothing.”

Clive James, “Exploring the Medium”