No, I never said much about the passage into yet another new year. Hopes and fears and all that — or anything about the old year. Old years are old, that’s all I’ll say about that.
I just remember the little dog quivered and trembled as July 4th fireworks exploded outside the home in Rotterdam Junction where I went to escape the Florida heat for that hot month. I wanted to be on the lawn watching them and hearing them, in the distant sky and the lawn across the street — concussions and flaring, hissing spectacles, great and small. But I was inside, consoling a dog — the same dog who looked so unhappy and distressed at the thud, whistle, crash and boom of New Year’s Eve incendiaries all around us as midnight crept up and over the fence like time’s predator. The dog might have thought, ‘save me from that beast!’ Or, ‘existential man, making needless noises. No wonder there are wars.’
And what more can be said of new beginnings for those of us who are never finishing what we begin?
Somehow, I remember the guy who came into The Last Mile Lounge on January 2nd, 2017. That already seems like a long time ago. (It is, after all, already a mystical seven years ago.) Oddly enough, this guy was r emembering stuff from back in 2012. Crazy, he, too, was wondering, where’s the time go? Then, he was launched on a riff about time — and eternity.
A New Year. Time Square delirium already days gone. All the confetti swept up. But, in his mind, the observances continued.
And this guy in the shadowy corner of the lounge was saying to a few people at another table — all of them strangers who’d “dropped in” for a beer and a “ball.” Speaking of balls.
And then there was this guy. He seemed a seer; seemed to sense that life sweeps us down river. And he was speaking haikus, from what I could hear (I’d just dropped in, too. The bartender’s name was Cynthia; she works Thursdays and Fridays, still. Therefore this must have been a Thursday or Friday. She could hear the guy; everybody could.)
The seer at the back table said:
“We’re bug on a leaf, floating down stream. Singing.”
Wher had I heard that?
He said:
“I will arise now, and go to Innesfree…”
I knew where I’d heard that. Or read it. Or heard it, ‘in the deep heart’s core.’
He said:
“You shall tread upon the asp and the viper; you shall trample down the lion and the dragon.”
Everybody was listening now. Crazy. But where had we heard that? Snakes, dragons, lions.
He stood now. We were all listening, worried. Would we need to call the cops?
He said:
“Shall he who shaped the ear not hear, or he who formed the eye not see? The Lord knows the thoughts of men and that they are vain.”
Then he said:
“Happy New Year!”
Then he sat. He was drinking ice water. He never said another word.
A cold rain was falling outside.
Yeah, happy new year….
19 Cent Notebook 