geez.
you go to a party, stand around on a balcony watching the snow fall, manage somehow to drink too much wine. eventually you go home and fall asleep on the couch, wake up not feeling as bad as you thought you would and you think:
"it's 2008.
what happened?
where does time go and who keeps speeding it up?"
you remember standing on a balcony the night before watching the snow fall and you remember thinking "i keep speeding toward getting older" and "but it doesn't seem so bad so long as i wear a tiara" and you remember looking at yourself in the glass door, at the ridiculous cardboard tiara you're wearing and that behind the tiara you could see people moving around in the livingroom, where the party is.
you watch them move, doing whatever they are doing, and you think:
"i dont know these people at all."
and its true.
and you say out loud: "i keep speeding toward getting older"
while you ask yourself inwardly: "what am i doing here?"
the party was fun but then it wasn't. or maybe it was the same the whole time and you are the one who changed. or maybe new years eve is the kind of occasion that prompts alot of people to wonder what the hell they are doing and that's why they make resolutions, these little bromides concerning Achievement that you chant to yourself between glasses of scotch, during that phase characterised by the increasing elusiveness of normally stable factors like your name and the name of the person you were talking to, the one who is sure she knows you from somewhere.
so you turn around and look at the snow falling and at the abandoned newspaper building that functions as regional ornament, the weathervane with the automobile atop it.
it is quiet on the balcony.
the snow makes sound bend around you.
a bit past the newspaper building, you remember looking at a bridge and thinking that the far end of it seems to disappear into fog and that strangely this make you realize that the world is big.
so you make a little list: what am i doing and why am i doing it?
and you arrive at tfp, eventually.
it's not that different from the party that you are and are not attending: i mean, you're at the party, but you're also standing on the balcony and have been standing on the balcony for a very long time. you dont really know the people. they seem nice, but you dont know them and they dont know you.
and it's late and you're bored and you're cold.
you remember tossing a cigarette over the edge of the balcony.
you remember not deciding anything in particular, just opening the door to walk back into the party.
you remember standing inside the door and that the others are all gathered at the far end of the room and that they are chatting amongst themselves and you think:
"i could leave now. this is as good a time as any."
but you dont make up your mind.
you just notice how easy it is to decide to leave.
you wonder whether the conversations that are happening across the room are the same conversations as they always are, whether this is not a discrete party but one of a seemingly endless series of interchangable parties, always with the same cast of characters, always saying more or less the same things. you remember thinking something like this in philadelphia: there is only one party that ever happens. it just changes location.
and so you walk back into the main room, but have no idea why.
inertia probably.
and you remember this the next morning, when the situation repeats.