She's Writing a Novel

New Year's calls for resolution and reflection, and I've done a bit of both on my own and together with the Russian lover. Discussing the year that had past, we decided it was, all told, a good year. Not without its low points, but much improved on many of the years before it. There was more momentum and fewer oh-shit moments.

I'm wary of resolutions, because the resolution of today is often the disappointment in myself tomorrow. Failure comes naturally to a pessimist, because you're more likely to berate yourself for the things you didn't do instead of congratulating yourself for the things you did. I don't think there is anything wrong with asking yourself why the glass is still half-empty at the end of the year, or in resolving to continue to fill it, but it should coincide with a celebration that the glass has been filled by half.

Last year I often felt like I was just being carried along by the tide and hanging in for the ride. There was a certain lack of intention bordering on apathy as I trudged through the days. I was content but aimless. Toward the end of the year I tried to find focus, first framing it in terms of a familiar discipline -- exercise. And I've promptly found myself in a position where that is precisely the one thing I cannot do at all, as I am rehabilitated vertebrae by vertebrae in a maddeningly slow and gentle recovery.

That I'm being forced to STOP just when I'd gathered up my whole being for GO has made me reconsider my notions of GO. And STOP, for that matter. For years I did not stop to address what I knew was something wrong in my body, however vague that awareness was, and in turn my body grew weaker. I was becoming so weak and sore physically that living itself was starting to make me tired; I thought it was just life that was exhausting me, when it was my exhausted body that was leaving me little with which to live.

Now that I'm receiving treatment, I am optimistic that in a few months I'll find myself with even more energy, and a body that can keep up with my intent. Already I have moments where I feel a strange buoyancy, and I realize it's the absence of that subconscious river of aches and pains which has been so constant over the past few years. I'm almost giddy when I consider that this is how I could feel all the time some day.

In the meantime, I've thought of the tweaks and changes I'd like to introduce in 2012. Some are pretty ambitious and I'm still mulling them over. Some are more superficial. For example:

-Drink more coffee. I ran on huge amounts of caffeine for years, but I've tapered off in my old age. I'm drinking the recommended daily minimum, but nowhere near approaching the suggested maximum. Here is where I can manufacture some additional energy while my body works through its issues.

-Buy more clothes. And shoes. Most women need to resolve the opposite, I'm sure. I've never liked shopping and tend to avoid it, which means my wardrobe disintegrates faster than I can replace it (much less improve it). I'm going to push myself to buy one thing a week -- even if it's only leggings or a thong -- to keep fueling my closet.

Bum around the house in sexier articles of clothing. I'm increasingly convinced that sweatpants have become the burka of the West; except unlike Muslim women, American women only cover it up at home.

2011 was good to me, and in 2012 I hope to be good to myself.

Our Christmas present to ourselves, if you want to call it that, was a flat screen TV. But it was just that a really good sale happened around Christmas and we decided at the price advertised, we were more than happy to spend the money. On getting a flat screen, finally.

Up until now, we were hanging on to the Russian lover's ancient 21 inch box of a television. It worked just fine and there never seemed to be a good time to buy a TV. To be the people that went out and blew hundreds of dollars on a television? Ugh. How pedestrian. We'd rather spend hundreds of dollars on champagne and pretend we aren't rushing home to catch a new episode of Real Housewives.

In this country there seems to be an inverse relationship between a person's wealth and the size of their television. Not always, mind you -- sometimes a guy in a red Ferrari is just a guy in a red Ferrari and not a guy obfuscating his lack of endowment. Plenty of the materially endowed have grandiose televisions. But is there anyone on government assistance not watching their cousin's appearance on Maury via a 60 inch plasma? I didn't think so.

Anyway, I'm used to having yesterday's technology. That's what happens when you live with a true techie. The shoemaker's children go barefoot, and the internet guru's girlfriends are bereft of gadgetry. But everything we do have? It works. And you wouldn't believe our internet connectivity. Download speed? Right now I'm watching the YouTube video you haven't even made yet.

The thing is, techies know that technology is more fickle than fashion, and you're better off dusting off a pair of parachute pants than buying the latest "it" device. The device will A. not work or B. break or C. you will leave it in the back of the cab and be out a paycheck. And, if the device is awesome, then next week there will be ten kinds of that device, all for 1/2 the price and double the awesomeness.

When it comes to fashion, some people jump on a decade's excesses and others wait to see what will emerge and become a staple, at least, if not a classic. Technology is no less expensive and no less dynamic, so it doesn't hurt to hang back a little and watch. You, there, with the HD DVD player? You know I'm right.

Normally, January is a quiet month at my job. December and June are veritable hells, March and September roiling purgatories. August and May are tepid bitches. February is a cocktease. There isn't much to say about April, October, or November -- they're wallflowers. But January and July... they used to come as an oasis of calm after their respective hell months. Months where you could go the office and breathe, scheme, plan, maybe even catch up, maybe, maybe,even start to get ahead.

But that's not the case anymore. I'm not entirely sure what happened. During a recession everybody works twice as hard to stay in the same place, certainly. A recession is an economic desert people are forced to march through, and every time someone falls into the dust and doesn't get up, someone still standing is handed their cross to continue carrying.

This January, however, I feel as though I'm bearing the brunt of a thousand optimistic New Year's resolutions; like so many people got up on January 1 determined to work harder, do better, achieve more -- and to reach their goals, of course, they needed that much more out of me. And the demands of their resolutions increasingly make it difficult to maintain my own resolve to keep my head above water. A little for you, a little for you, and a lot for you -- and suddenly there is nothing left for myself.

I like being busy at work, and I relish a day's end where I know I haven't stopped to breathe but I also know I've accomplished a million things. Part of me has always loved the whirling dervish that is corporate life with all its schizophrenic multi-tasking, while part of me knows this Sisyphean life will always, by definition, bring limited satisfaction and stunted achievement.

So, January. Not the lull I was looking forward to; not the respite I needed. For now I guess I'll shore up on immune boosters during the day, down plenty of wine at night, and hope that when July comes around she is still her lazy old self.

So far it looks like 2012 is the Year of the Divorce. Not a whole lot of knot-tying going on, but amicable separations? You can't refresh your browser as fast as these are being announced right now. The year's most popular resolution: Getting the hell out of this relationship.

The past weekend brought us the demise of yet another obnoxiously perfect union, Heidi and Seal. The annual renewal of vows! The blow-out Halloween party tradition! Those perfect bodies, those A-list careers! Why, if these kids can't make it work then obviously the rest of us don't have a chance.

It used to be that the more money and social status you had, the less freedom you were allowed in your romantic choices. Romance was for stable boys and scullery maids! Anyone of wealth and social standing understood that their role in life was to preserve the status quo at a minimum, but preferably to elevate the social rank and material assets of the whole family. Marriage was no more romantic then than a corporate merger is today. Marriage, in fact, was the original corporate merger. The many left-leaning ladies upset about the existence of corporate personhood might pause a moment to be glad at least that they've been relieved of that particular responsibility.

But today it's precisely the rich and famous that marry with impunity, without thought to the implications of their union or the consequences of a subsequent separation. Beyond a prenup, anyway. The rest of the population has to give serious consideration to the outcome of throwing fates together. When wealth marries it boards a yacht together; when mediocrity weds it is climbing with each other into a life raft.

But these celebrity marriages fail for the same reason reality dating shows never lead to lasting relationships; they're built on nothing but a set piece. When the show is done, when the lights dim, when the audience is gone -- they just pack it all up and call it over, only a little surprised that there was nothing left when the performances concluded.

A lot of people say that love, a marriage, is work-- and it's work that sometimes people grow tired of. I don't think that's true. I think love is what grows between two people who work together at life.

My cat--our cat--one of the cats in our blended family of cats--has picked up an annoying habit recently. She sits beside the front door of our apartment, looks up the wall at the ceiling, and meows pitifully. And loudly. It's a heartbreaking sound, really, when it's not completely fucking annoying. We have not been able to discover the reason for her plaintive cries -- it happens at random even when she has food, clean litter, and social opportunities available to her. She doesn't seem to be in pain. It's just...this thing she does by the front door.

I only heard her make that kind of complaint one time before we moved in with the Russian lover. I was in the bedroom of my ramshackle rental, and I heard a desperate yowl from the living room. I bolted the 10 feet it took to cross the apartment, where I found my heretofore voiceless feline companion gazing up at the wall above my sofa, meowing in hysterical distress.

Worried and confused, I followed her gaze. And promptly joined her in letting out a terrified howl of my own.

It was. Four...six?...inches long. Bright red. And so. Many. Legs.

I snatched up my cat, ran to the bedroom, and slammed the door. I flung us across the bed and started to sob. Because West Philly? Even I had joked that it was more or less a jungle, but actual creepy crawly tropical wildlife? Now the metaphor had gone too far.

I was not consoled by my own typical female solution (shut the door and hide!) to a typical female problem (over sized insects of indeterminate origin!). I knew that...thing...was still out there somewhere, even if I never saw it again. But I didn't have the guts to kill it and none of my shoes were menacing enough anyway.

This back story is all to say that presently I find myself often suppressing a thought generated by this memory:

Dear god, what awful thing is living in that wall?

At least now we live somewhere with a combat-hardened male and his enormous shoes.

February began today, already. I've finally adapted to dating things "2012" instead of "2011", although it looks wrong to me every time I do it. Not because I'm so used to the old year, but because 2012 is THE year. The one that's been hyped even more than the ushering in of a new millennium. I'm sure very few people actually believe the shit is about to hit the fan; nevertheless, now there is that collective association. We could have the most placid year ever on the globe and otherwise well-adjusted folks will still be looking over their shoulders every so often until midnight on December 31.

If the universe has a sense of humor, it will wait until January 1, 2013 to fuck us up--after we've all heaved a sigh of relief and realized we've been holding our breath all year. Sort of like the friend who sneaks in and grabs you from behind the moment you've confirmed there is nobody hiding in the closet, or the Hollywood shark that takes a chunk of out the bathing beauty just as she decides the thing in the water with her is just another prankster after all. BOO! Terror is always most effective in the split second you've finally convinced yourself that everything is OK.

But to remain paranoid is to be the guy with the tin foil hat and the cardboard signs sleeping with one eye open on Chestnut Street. I don't want to be that guy. That's why I'm a hedonist. Because bad things are always just around the corner waiting for you, and some of them you will avoid, but some of them you can't dodge. And in the end, there is no dodging The End.

So I embrace the cliche and try to live each day like it's my last, enjoying each breath like I won't have another, savoring each beer like the keg's about to kick. Maybe if we could all live 2012 like 2013 was never gonna happen, it would be the best year ever instead of a highly suspect annum.