2006 COMES TO AN END...

And 2007 waits in the wings.

I believe it was the ancient Greeks who maintained that human beings walked backwards to the Future. It seems quite logical to me. We don't know what the future holds, but we are intimately aware of both our Present and our Past. We see all that has unfolded in the seconds and minutes and days and weeks and months and years that have led us on this journey to the Present, but the Future is ambiguous, yet to be broken open from its plastic wrapping and entered. What will it bring, we wonder. Whatever it brings, it is brought upon a clean slate, and it is our will that determines what markings shall be made.

This is no truer than when one year shifts seemlessly to the next. The Past is the Past, the Present is fleeting and the Future is ours for the making. I have no resolutions for the new year, though. I'm, at this point in my life, compartmentalizing each day as a single unit. Just for today and one day at a time and easy does it and just fucking do it are all catch-phrases to which I subscribe, at this point in my life. I'm going to have to get on the Life is Beautiful soapbox again--sorry--because it is truer than an arrow. Things are beautiful and things happens for a reason. Sure, life throws curveballs--sometimes nasty curveballs which break from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock and pass across the plate for a called third strike, leaving the batter (me) weak-kneed and cursing--but, that, my friends, is life. Life, though often beautiful, does not shine through rose-colored glasses at all times. But, as Stewart Smalley was wont to lisp, "That's...okay."

[he preaches to the choir and they roll their eyes]

So, anyway.

Enjoy the transition and be safe. Happy New Year. Peace on earth. And goodwill to hookers. :-)