Blank horizons, new books, and unbridled possibility
Posted Tuesday, January 02, 2007 @ 02:05 AM

I have been thinking for a long time about how I might come here to confront the passing of 2006, an event which warrants more than the usual application of false significance. And yet, the last moments of December slipped quietly by, a change more indistinguishable than ever; the passing of the year felt as insignificant as a single increased digit. I stood in the fog of a cul-de-sac at the stroke of midnight, surrounded by people from high school and people I'd never met before. As we reached the "one" of our personal countdown, everyone in the circle pulled the string of a confetti popper. Tiny paper streamers exploded out of the plastic and fell to the wet asphalt. The circle disbanded, and a few of us retreated to the backyard immediately after to warm ourselves near a fire.

2006 has divided time into "before" and "after," and with the arrival of January, it is now undeniably "after," and I feel as though I'm treading water in the wake of a very large ship, surrounded by blank horizon. I am cleaved from the "before" of my first eighteen years, excited by the rush of possibility, but nevertheless struggling to stay afloat.

Even in January, I was looking ahead, imagining what it might feel like to graduate, to travel, to move out, and to see the end of such a big year:

I feel like all of this will be less like a long chapter ending, and more like the end of a book that you've lived in night after night, and it's suddenly over even though you knew the end was coming—had read the last paragraph long before knowing the characters—and it leaves you with only the blank page that follows the last period. The possibility of more to the story, only someone's stopped writing it, and you've no choice but to move on to a new book.

In the wake of 2006—a long, beautiful, treacherous, breathtaking year—I wish you all the best. Here's to 2007 and the blank pages of its new book—a year of unbridled possibility, a long swim in search of a new, giant ship, and the relief one feels after mustering the strength climb aboard.

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