New Year’s Resolution

January 2, 2004

Another year done gone.

And so it begins. I have no photos or exciting tales of drunken exploits from New Year's Eve. That's because I stayed home alone and read a book. In fact, I didn't even notice that the clock had passed midnight until Jaime-girl called from San Diego to tell me so. "Happy New Year!"

"Thanks."

"Where are you? What are you doing?"

"Just sitting home, reading a book."

"Aww."

But I hadn’t told her that to elicit sympathy; I said it because it was true. There were places I could've gone if I'd wanted to. But I didn't. And besides, the book was excellent. My friend Gregor turned me on to Alexander Trocchi and I burned through Young Adam in one sitting. There's a brilliant scene in the book where the main character talks about envy. He sees a young girl walking down the street with two young guys. He suddenly feels despair — a sense of loss. But then he goes on to realize that what he misses doesn't even exist. That what he's seeing — the situation that he is envying — only exists because he is seeing it.

"I felt a devastating loss for something which I had never had, and it didn't occur to me that that something was a thing which no one ever possesses for the simple reason that it is something which is created in being seen and which exists only for the spectator without whom it could never become an object to tantalize."

It made me think about my own life and how sometimes people read this blog and see my life differently than I do. As often as people worry about me not taking care of myself — especially as a type 1 diabetic —there are equally as many comments from people who are envious of one thing or another. It always surprises me. Although everything I write in here is true, or at least my perception of the truth, my life doesn't exist for me with the same perspective that it does for someone reading about it.

Yes? No? Am I losing you? Are you still reading? It doesn’t matter. I’d be writing this nonsense, regardless.

Which brings me to my New Year's resolution. What is it? I'll just run with the theme and quote Alexander Trocchi again:

"No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake. Loose ends, things unrelated, shifts, nightmare journeys, cities arrived at and left, meetings, desertions, betrayals, all manner of unions, adulteries, triumphs, defeats—these are the facts."