January 2000 Archives

It's just another form of grey outside, like yesterday and the day before and I'm ready for the break in the clouds to come. I know it's coming. It always comes just in time.

Inside, I'm not much different. There is blue sky galore out there in the future. I can see hints of it if I squint hard. But just now it's another form of grey in there, and I can feel it creeping around inside of me. I feel stiff.

I hadn't played my guitar in weeks when I picked it up again this weekend to play with an old friend. I need new strings. And isn't that just the way it is sometimes? I can play and it sounds okay, but I've got to spend money I don't have to get a couple of weeks of good string sound.

I'm not trying to sound hopeless, because that's not what I feel now. It's never what I feel. There's a hope that's deeper than forty years of grey sky (inside or outside), and I've got both hands on it. Sometimes I feel I'm losing it -- that my grip is slipping -- but in truth, it's got a grip on me.

Hope isn't a color. It's something else entirely that I can't explain. I won't try.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I spent the changeover at my mother's house, watching the ball drop in New York at 9pm PST, and then watching the ball drop in Portland at midnight.

Mostly, I did what I could to avoid hearing all of the blah blah about the "new millennium" and "new century." I'm frankly growing very tired of hearing it. And I'm even more tired of fruits like this guy who say -- and I quote -- that people who "insist the new millennium won't start until the year 2001" are "nitpickers."

Hrm. Nitpickers.

Maybe they are nitpickers. But they're also right.

Anyway, enough of that. Bless you all this year. May you find joy!