New Year's Eve: What I Found in My Notebook

 “And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.” — Steve Jobs

December 21, 2012 

Hello, we’re here. Hmmm, who’s we? We’re always at least two people. One is visible through the lamp-lit window, scribbling, audible, whispering these words as dust motes fall slowly like lazy shooting stars. The other one is some relentless tyrant of thought. New era, she reminds. No, just another winter solstice. What? Just a winter solstice?  Less than 100 winter solstices in a typical lifetime, and this one, your 53rd. Tomorrow there will be 18 seconds more of daylight, this solstice, this moment, gone. It’s always a new era.

There was cat fur in my tea, and I just swallowed it … so that is how ritual begins. And for many years, she celebrated the solstice by drinking a little cat fur with her tea at 5:42 a.m., a certain Ceylon from Fiji or green jasmine from the sacred source, Amazon (dot com). I am writing in dust, on a piece of dead tree. The tyrant chides, pay attention. Sometimes when a fleck of dust hits the coiled bulb, it sparks, a tiny explosion, and you can almost hear out of the florescent buzz, I was here, look, I was here.