The Next New Year

Just another night.

One might think so here in this room. I get up and wash dishes, make coffee, make strawberry Nesquick, fold dirty clothes. I microwave beans and rice, open a can of cooked ham, eat cheese. I drink more coffee, use the toilet and then get back online. The Internet connection has been up all night. Then I hear it. The chime goes off in my computer, the top of the hour. There is shouting outside my window. People are talking in my hallway. Music is playing loudly outside. The church steeple rings out twelve notes into the night air.

It is twelve midnight. The new year. 2009.

Just another night. I wonder what I'm going to do tomorrow. I have no plans. Nothing to do. If the Internet collapses on the overnight I'll be without any communication with the outside world. I'll be without my sole source of linkage with the living. I'll be alone.

Not that I fear being alone. I've come to love it. I live in a hermetically sealed room, BECAUSE I'VE GONE FIVE YEARS WITHOUT ANY MOTHER- FUCKING PRIVACY. Five whole years with seeing someone there whenever I turn around. Primarily though, another male face. If you count the added years when I was married, which I normally don't. But if you did it would equal about twenty years. But what married man seeks privacy from a wife? Well, I may be making a fool out of myself with that statement. But rationally speaking, a married couple is supposed to be together. So I don't count those years. But in counting the years that I've been looking in the faces of MEN and STRANGERS from morning to night, it's been over five years without any real privacy. Only when I lock the stall door in a public bathroom did I ever find some privacy.

So are you really fucking surprised that I'm a loner? That I like my alone time? I take my fat ass home and sit before my computer and write and read and blog. It's what I do. And it's almost ironic because I fear, or I believe, that what you are caught doing on New Years is what your life will be based on in the year to come. I believe that that's why there is so much celebration that goes on on New Years. It is simply that many people are attuned to a pagan belief that if they are making merriment during the change of the year, dancing, kissing, hugging with friends and loved ones, that this will be perpetuated for another year. So they believe, knowledgeably or unconsciously.

My years being homeless has taught me otherwise. Last year I spent New Years sleep in a shelter. Now I'm in my own crib. That blew that logic out of the water, didn't it? One year, HOMELESS mind you, I spent it at a party, drinking, getting stoned, kissing and dancing with strange women. Yeah, I was invited and I made a natural born ass out of myself. What did the next year hold for me? I was homeless for half of it. Tough break for the hobo.

But I do intend on 2009 to be my banner year when it comes to my writing. I'm going to work twice as hard. Harder than I'm doing now. And do twice as many things that need to be done. I'm going to get more orderly and make drastic moves to better myself even further. I will not give up hope in myself. The sky is the limit right now in my life. Brooklyn boy will make good. Just you wait and see.

aThe steps have to be small and sustained. Not large and haphazard. This is not a race, it's a slow growth, like that of a tree. Sturdy and strong, rising high overhead, overarching and broad. That's me for 2009.

I'm listening to the dulcet tones of Phillip Glass playing over Internet radio, it is almost three O'clock in the morning and I'm typing out this blog. I slept through most of this day so going to sleep tonight will be a small miracle.

In the morning I will be heading to the Bowery Poetry Club. It will be the annual New Year's Day Marathon of Poets. and I am scheduled to read there. It's an all day reading with poets from all over the New York area being invited to perform. I happen to be one of them. I am very fortunate to be able to read my work before so many people. Poets have such a short shelf life. They are seldom remembered. They are almost never revered. Except for those who really bust their humps to make it work for them. I don't know if I have a real poet in me. All I can do is keep trying on the sidelines for something to come of it. My writing also. I push that to the best of my abilities though. I work to finish several projects still in the fire for me. I have the time and the wherewithal. Now I just need to apply myself to finishing something. Like my rapidly developing screenplay. Or the handbook. Or my upcoming novel. Or a previous novel that I'm finishing up on.

Too much, right?

Well, that's what my plan is for 2009.

I hope your plans come to fruition too in the New Year.

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