Next Year: 2006

Here in Southern California, it looks like we will be rained out of the old year, and rained into the new.

I don't mind a bit. Last year's deluge made this Fall's persimmon-fest the most bountiful ever. And I'm not even going to get into the cherimoyas and the white zapotes. Yes, I have kinky fruit trees, but aside from that, I love the rain. I don't remember if I complained about it last year, but if I did I shouldn't have. Los Angeles, by rights, should be a desert. I read a report some years ago that said there was only enough water naturally here to support a community of 80,000 people. There are ten million of us just in LA County alone, and that's not counting those who choose not to be counted or the ones who live outside the county but are actually part of the county in one way or another.

So when it rains here, it is a special, sacred moment, a rare blessing. It's never enough, but while it's happening I feel like I am part of nature, at one with the universe, instead of a squatter in a foreign land that doesn't need or want me. Look, water from the sky! We're saved! I don't run outside and get all wet and twirl around in it, though. Not unless the cameras are rolling.

A lot of bloggers seem to think it's a good idea to recap the past year, because it's almost over and we're starting a new one. This is helpful to me because I can barely remember what time I went to bed last night, much less what crime against reason was committed by what administration official in March (oh, yeah, it was the Terry Schiavo fiasco). Even so, I don't pay much attention to these annual reviews. Life goes on, despite the numbers we put on the years. I haven't figured out if it's a circle or a straight line or maybe a downward spiral, but it does seem to be just one damned thing after another, and bundling the events of one arbitrary time period into a package to reflect on doesn't make much sense to me.

Still, I just want to take a moment on New Year's Eve to make a couple of observations:

• I am the only one (so far) among those I think of as my blogging buddies who is blogging today, the biggest party day of the year. So, no matter how I try to paint myself here, I guess I have no life.
• I am deeply grateful to those same blogging buddies for all you have written over the past year, the first full year of revision99, on your blogs and in my comments section. I feel like I have made friends here, and thanks in part to you Precious Few, I have learned something about my place in the world. It's not as exalted as I'd hoped it would be, but knowing where you stand is important if you're going to move on.
  
• I've made at least one enemy here, someone whom I thought I knew a little bit, and who surprised me with obnoxious personality quirks and bizarre attitudes about life. You're probably not still reading here, but if you are, may I say "fuck you?" (I have addressed my specific grievances in no uncertain terms directly to this person in private email. So if you didn't get the email, it's not you.) I haven't learned my lesson, though, and I continue to think all the rest of you are the charming and clever people you seem to be online.
  
• Some bloggers that I read have disappeared, and I miss them. I find myself checking for new posts on defunct blogs, hoping they'd come back. Some just stopped writing, some made announcements and stopped writing, some took down their sites and some left the old sites intact, like ghost towns, full of the past, but no life. I wish the rest of you wouldn't do this to me - have you no concern for your readers with no life? What, you got girlfriends, jobs, new homes, new hobbies and now you can't sit down occasionally and call your mother write a little note on your blog? I know we all hoped we'd have readers when we started doing this, but how many of us anticipated that we'd be setting up expectations, and things we do (or stop doing) actually affect people we don't even know? If I had a million readers I guess it would be easier to quit, but you Precious Few are really so few that I could totally afford to buy you all brunch if you came to my town on the same day. When the day comes that I have to say goodbye, I see now that it could be as tearful as any real life separation. And, sure, brunch will be on me.

That's it. I know you're all getting ready for tonight's parties. Chances are you won't see this until 2006, but just in case, when you're all smooching and toasting each other at midnight, raise a glass for me. I'll be sleeping in front of my television, and dreaming of you.