the end of a journal

It's a new year, and I'm tired of hearing about New Year's resolutions, the start of a new day, pickled lambs, and everything in between. The earth revolves around the sun--thanks, Nic C.--and a new year begins, but there's really nothing too "new" about it. The only thing that changes is that half of us are hungover come the next morning when we're looking for excuses to get out of church. The New Year marks an end and a beginning, and maybe that's what draws us to it: we like endings, and we like beginnings. But we don't like being in the middle. We don't like the actual trek from Point A to Point B. The New Year tells us that all the bad shit of 2011 is coming to an end, and all the good stuff of 2012 is beginning. Really, that's just something we like to tell ourselves. The muddled chaos in our lives doesn't disappear, there's no blank slate being born. The chaos just keeps going, evolving, in undulating rhythms like the tides (though not based, as it were, on the lunar calender). 

Some people measure their lives by the dawning of a new day, but I tend to categorize my life not according to years but according to journals. It's weird, it really is. Finished journals come to stand for far more than they really are (just scribbled words from a cluttered mind); they begin to stand for different periods of my life. It's here that my nostalgia gets spoiled like a Price Hill prostitute at the nail salon down the street. Another journal's come to a close--August 1 to December 31 [2011]--and, well, it's been a damned good off-the-hook, and in the best throw-up-in-your-mouth-and-swallow-it-down-just-to-throw-it-up-again-cause-you-like-the-taste kinda way: more twists and turns than Lady Gaga's sexuality coupled with unforeseen character development, plateauing plot-twists, and a fair amount of cliffhangers promising no resolution*. You name it, this journal's got it. I even made a trip to Wisconsin, which was exciting, and long trips like that don't happen too often in this mundane life of mine.  Now the new journal's there with its blank pages before me (damn, now I've got Natasha Bedingfield stuck in my head), and though I don't know what's coming, I'm hoping that the old experiences of 2011 will give birth to new adventures in 2012. 

Post-Script. I really need to get my shit together on this blog. All these nostalgic posts are making me sick. 

Post-(Post)Script. I'm not actually as nostalgic as my blog might lead you to believe. Nostalgic, yes, but not like this. Not like this.

Post-(Post)(Post)Script. I know one day I'll look back on this post... Abort.

None of that was staged.


* I just want to point out how clever that sentence really is. People usually don't notice these things, so here you go. The mentioning of Lady Gaga's "topsy-turvy" sexuality isn't abandoned in what's to come but echoed through it all. Unforeseen character developments, plot-twists grinding to a stalemate, and the absence of any guarantee that things will pan out in a satisfying away are all essentially echoing her career (which I just introduced myself to on Wikipedia). Yes, all these things are directly related to what's actually in the journal (so, yeah, no Lady Gaga there; we're past that); but they work on more than on level. It's like a double entendre on steroids (or cocaine). And the whole throw-up-in-your-mouth kinda thing, that's what it's like to go to one of her concerts. Think Price Hill Kroger meets middle-class, socially-estranged pop-addicts craving a Grey Area. There's a reason she calls her hardcore fans "Little Monsters." And it's sad that I know that.