2001 is over, done, and buried. The turmoil, fear, and loss, as necessary as the ashes for the phoenix to rise from, will not be missed, even if they were required.

2002 is cleanup, rebuilding, and getting on with life. This isn't necessarily any more fun than standing on the balcony watching the flames, but it is a different kind of warmth...nourishing and healthy. I have to say that I like it.

Less really can be more, and sometimes all you need to discover yourself is the chance to take off all the filters and costumes that have been installed. Old habits may die hard, but I derive not-so-guilty pleasure from listening to their screams as they go. They will not be missed.

It's 70 degrees tonight...or damn close to that. January 29th is not the time to be getting spring fever. Damn...too late.

So, on an unlikely evening, sweating as I wait for the ferry, and ponder my unlikely life, which couldn't have turned out any other way now that it has happened, I am in awe. Of the people around me and the headspace I find myself in. I didn't set out for here, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's funny how much more I have to say when I am in a shitty mood. Pain does make for good art, I suppose. Sorry to disappoint anyone, then, because although most of the constant annoyances of my world are still present, I am about as happy as I could possibly be.

I'll be driving to work tomorrow, though, and that always makes for good art.

Heh.

Change affects all of our lives.

If I look around, I see change everywhere. Or evidence of change. On a day when I spent cleaning out the apartment, it's doubly true.

People need change in their lives. Most people, myself included, claim not to like a lot of change all at once. While we may even think that at the time we say it, change is important. It keeps us from becoming completely stuck sometimes--while others, it is how we can gather up what is left of a particular moment and move ahead.

Sometimes there is just too much to deal with, and I get overwhelmed. I try to keep on top of change as it threatens to swamp me, and I am only occasionally successful at it.

I find that the best way to manage change is to deal with it as it comes. Ignore it for too long, and it does become exponentially more difficult to get on top of.

Some people seek change, looking for as much as they can, because they think it is the answer to their problems.

I don't know...maybe, for them, it is.

I just want to have a grip on my situation.

Nearly everyone has to manage change, whether they were looking for it or it was thrust upon them.

They say that dealing with change is stressful. For the most part, I'd have to agree.

In the summer, they say that it's not the heat, it's the humidity.

Well, conversely, in the winter, it's not the cold, it's the...

Oh, who am I kidding. It most certainly is the fucking cold.

"Don't miss the boat", a popular phrase in the modern vernacular, takes on a whole different meaning when you take a ferry to work everyday.

***

I have never heard of the cologne called "Sweaty Onions", but I know it exists, because the guy next to me on the train applied it liberally before he left the house.

***

If cleanliness is next to godliness, then I'm going to hell, just looking around my apartment. Then again, I was already going there for other reasons, anyway.

Besides, I prefer it. All the fun people go there. Based on who declares themselves destined for heaven, I'd take anywhere else.

Even Houston.

***

Sometimes, when I am stressed, that little muscle near my left eye twitches. Sometimes, it's the right eye. Why the difference?

***

What happens when your third eye twitches?

***

In the stranger than fiction category, I read the following paragraph in "Shop Girl" by Steve Martin:

"Three days before Thanksgiving, he boards Age's auxilliary bus for a sixty city road trip, starting in Barstow, California, heading toward New Jersey, and ninety days later, in a masterpiece of illogical routing, ending in Solvang, California."

***

Ohhhh-kay then...

On a particular Tuesday, this past week, my mind was racing. This isn't different from any other tuesday, or any other day really, since every day, from the first waking moment to the final conscious memory, the RPM's of my mental engine are almost always redline.

Sometimes, though, I forget to put it in gear.

So while my mind was turning over the thoughts of work, life, and matters of the heart, I gathered up everything to head out into my day, except my thoughts, and closed the door.

Oh shit...I didn't gather up my keys either. Had I only realized that immediately preceding the *click* of the latch and not immediately after, the story would end there.

Now what?

Just to complete the scene: It was about 25 degrees outside, and other than a cell phone and a plastic emergency car key, I had little to sustain myself in such a harsh environment and a wet head. Plus, I was due in NYC in less than an hour (I already wasn't going to make it) and had another client to visit in the afternoon.

Oh yeah, and one of my tires was almost flat.

After realizing I had no idea what the name of the corporation who holds my lease was, I called my boss, who had the brilliant idea of calling a locksmith. Far from engaging my though process into productivity, I managed only to push the pedal to the floor, and it was still in neutral.

Give up the NYC visit, get air, wait 2 HOURS for the locksmith (he's on his way! No, really!) I paid the gravely-voiced man $100 to pick my lock...in, quite literally, 4 seconds.

I knew I'd never sleep again until I asked how long it took to learn that.

Twelve years, was the reply. Good thing, too, since if it took 3 months I would have to break the conditions of my lease and get a pet something that is loud and homicidal...and I really am not up for that sort of thing. If a person wants to practice breaking into my house for 12 years, they are entitled to my stuff, as far as I am concerned.

It was pointed out to me that I paid someone to break in, and wasn't that just silly. After further reflection, however, I had do disagree. He could break into my house whenever he wanted. I paid him not to take anything once he did.

He never even went in to look.

Crime does pay, it turns out, and can even be legal in certain circumstances. I can't say that I am disappointed that there are people skilled in breaking and entering, since it saved my sorry ass once already.

I do remember to bring my keys with me each morning. I have a spare sitting in the car, too, in case I don't.

All the precautions are easier than trying to calm my hyperactive cerebellum...I think that is completely beyond help.

Walking briskly from the Wall Street pier to the uptown 4 train, sucking down a joyless cigarette and trying not to be cold, I heard a voice calling:

"Excuse me! Suit! Hey SUIT! Yeah, you....suit....got a spare cigarette???"

I didn't even slow my pace, and only turned my head enough to look after he caught up to me. He wasn't homeless, but he wasn't exactly on his way to the NYSE, either.

"Yo, dude, my fucking name ain't SUIT."

I am not a New Yorker, but he doesn't need to know that. I speak the local dialect fluently, and often--when appropriate. Plus, I am in no mood on this particular Monday morning.

I started to explain that maybe he could have chosen ANY other aspect of me for a description, because, no matter what I am wearing...I will *never* be a "suit". Given my mood and mental disposition at the time, he would have had far more success calling me dickhead.

Now that I think about it, he may have done that before he went on his way.

I say "started to explain" because he began to ramble on about asking me to be his guardian, and that I over-interpreted his request (even though it seemed pretty clear-cut to me). The rest of the dialog was incoherent on his part, and silent on mine.

Then, we parted ways.

After a subway ride, transfer, and short walk in the driving wet snow, I got to work. I immediately went into the restroom and checked...still nothing.

I wash my forehead once a day, at least, and still, the sign inviting this kind of shit seems to be there. I can't see it, either, so it's only that much more frustrating.

...and if you're still trying to figure out just what the hell that was all about yesterday, treat it as a cautionary tale about how people who are depressed, upset, seriously unhappy, and/or have had way too much time to dwell on something, should be explicitly barred from using a computer.

I'm actually feeling worse today, so I'll just leave it at that.

Two thousand two. Two thousand and two. Twenty-oh-two.

I'm not sure which is the most proper way to denote this year, but I'm relatively sure it's one of them. Instead, I'll just use 2002.

It's a palindrome year, and we haven't had that happen since 1991. Even more remarkable: there haven't been two palindrome years within a one-century span since 1001. The next palindrome won't be until 2112, and the next two-in-one-century until 2992/3003.

Seems some significance should be taken from that.

A palindrome is the same back-to-front as it is front-to-back. I can't decide if a mirror image end to this year would actually be good or not, as I don't know if that would result in the same events in reverse, or the same events again. Reverse is the only order I could stomach right now.

2001 was a significant year...as years go. I suppose they are all significant in their own way, although that one contained enough loss and love and loss and love and loss and strength that for a single block of 12 months, it felt like 2 years had passed. Overall it was a good one, but I wouldn’t want to live it again. Not most of it, anyway.

But that was last week.... last year.

I had a good passing into the New Year, insofar as these things go. Something different, something new...with people I care about. Something I will treasure the memory of forever.

At the end of 2000, having long forgotten about the lights staying on for 01-01-01 and the fresh loss of that year's acrid taste still fresh, I vowed to forgo such insignificance of ceremony this year simply because it looked good to everyone who might possibly be watching. If that sounds convoluted, it's supposed to.

So three days into a fresh calendar, I am here again, with another acrid taste, although I have never been here before, either. Perhaps this year, a step-off onto the wrong foot will undo itself 11 3/4 months hence, or perhaps I am trying to take solace in a situation that seems impossible when the solution should not even be hard.

Quantum theory tells us that all outcomes are concurrent until one is set upon in observation...that seeing something as we wish will set it into that state. The collapse of possibility into a set state of singular existence can happen at any time with only a set of eyes to choose the course of fate. It is even possible to choose and choose again, having observed an event in one state, then another, and each observation will oblige whatever we ask of it.

It's a neat little theory when there is only one observer. The catch is, that is rarely the case.

In the case of outcome being forced in an undesirable direction, do you leave open the other potential states? Or accept the choice as being what needs to be seen for whatever the observer must choose? Do you choose differently and let the universe sort it out? Is the conflicting quanta observed treated as a union or an intersection? When your own reality starts collapsing around you, is mourning the loss of possibility the problem, or is it in choosing the wrong state? Is pain truly inevitable?

This, the year of palindrome--of symmetry--has me off balance less than 96 hours into it, and no matter how I turn it over in my head, I cannot make any sense of just why this is. If the personal desires for observation have any teeth in setting forth possibility into concrete, then everything is just completely wrong.

Why do we need to see things the way we do? Why does it have to hurt? I feel the anger and sadness boil up beneath my skin, screaming the answer, which should be so simple, but in the end, is only a potentiality…and I'm not the only observer.