First Day

Ah! The delicious scent of morning in a fresh new year, barely out of the package! The coffee smells richer on the first day, and everything is filled with promise.

I am weary of the last few weeks of looking back. I can’t take that load of old clothes to the Goodwill yesterday and get the tax write-off. 2005 is done and gone. And there was so much wreckage in the old year. Maybe this one would be a little easier. I blinked owlishly at the possibilities. Should I get married this year? Purchase or sell real estate? Encounter terrorists or hybrid-human robots advancing up Arlington Boulevard ?

People are starting to talk seriously about the convergence of technology and evolution, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that they hadn’t got the whole thing straight. We are running out of oil and good ideas just as the planet is warming to a point where the oceans and heavens are raging. At the same time we appear to be on the brink of creating self-aware networks. We might be able to download ourselves right into them. At least that is what one guy thinks, and he has charts and graphs.

If I met the robots, what should I say to them?

I tried a couple approaches in my mind, wondering if conciliation might be best, or something more militant and assertive. It took nearly a pot of coffee to decide I didn’t know which was better, any more than I understand the war, or what is likely to happen in the year to come. Hell, I could be dead and it wouldn’t take Osama or the Robots to do it.

I took down the Christmas decorations in Upper Big Pink and stowed them away. Normally I keep the lights up until March, but with the pensioners here in the building on fixed incomes, using the power to keep them running seemed a bit profligate. Conservation seems the better course. I don’t want Old Jack whacking me with his cane for driving up his condo fees.

I thought that again when I wandered down to the elevator and lunged down into the garage. I climbed into the little red car. I decided started the engine and lowered the top, marveling at all the little German motors that raise the trunk lid up, and cantilever the hardtop into itself in two pieces, depositing it with efficiency in the back.

It was too cold to drive around with it down, but I did anyway. All those Chinese and Indians will want to put their tops down, too. What are we going to do when we run out of oil? Carpe Diem, I thought, and accelerated out of the garage.

The image of Dick Clark came to me. It had been good to know that he was back on the New Year’s television coverage of the ball dropping in Times Square . I had seen them putting up the scaffolding for it last week- for the Waterford crystal ball, that is, not for Dick.

The stroke had done some damage to him, and his voice was labored. His tongue didn’t move like it used to, and I felt bad for him. He had made such a career of perpetual youth. I remember him and Johnny Carson as young men on the little black-and-white television. Johnny died last year, along with a long list of people I remember as being fairly young.

I was small, but will always remember Dick’s show “American Bandstand.” He would ask the kids what they thought of the song they had just danced to. “Good beat, snappy lyrics, I’d give it an 86,” they would say.

I don’t know if he got mixed up in the Payola scandal or not; there was a real stink about the record companies paying off the disc jockeys to get air time. He certainly would have known about it, being so prominent in the business. But his career sailed along, so I guess he was not tainted. But watching him now was an uncomfortable reminder of mortality. But if he can get to the studio and do his thing, more power to him.

I thought about how difficult the 3 rd of January is going to be, when we all show up back at the office all bleary and out-of-sorts, having just gotten used to doing nothing much at all. There is a lot to be done. I saw in the papers that the North Koreans would like us to leave the Peninsula , and the meteorologists are saying that it is likely to be another big storm season.

I made a list of things we ought to get started on. We need to pull back from the DMZ so the Dear Leader can’t drop multiple rocket launchers on our kids. We ought to support the Corps of Engineers as they build bigger and stronger dykes. I hope our new Supreme Court Justices are wise, and that no one does anything with the surveillance of my computer and wireless phone. I hope the Iraqi Army and Police grow strong, but in the right way, and the insurgents get discouraged and go home. I hope our troops are vigilant, and brave, and that when they come home the sacrifice of those brave young kids will have meant something.

A year of hope, I thought. Anything can go right.

What the hell. Look forward, not back. I found a Hindu man who had his gas station open as a public service on the holiday. They sure work hard, I thought, as I topped off the reservoir with hi-test. I like to keep a full tank, just in case.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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