revolutions and resolutions

I came into the new year bright with fever and drenched in champagne, which is how it always should be. Instead of jello shots I was hording robotussin and feigning interest in my very expensive and by all accounts superb dinner. I couldn't have been bothered, I was chasing after pink coughing butterflies and clinging to my bearings. Nobody gave us any froufrou, all that foie gras and champagne and nary a tiara or a kazoo.

But all the ladies at the table all are all wearing shades and shapes of black, and all of our lipstick is peeled back in laughter, swirling about in clouds, raucousness and words getting tangled in the candlelight, I keep prickling and unprickling as the fever builds and just as suddenly recedes, and I keep hearing snatches of conversations that are seven years old and seeing the ghosts of old friends lingering in the shimmering heat next to the kitchen. I take another swig of robotussin and hold fast to the table.

We are six at table, five of the best people on earth, two have come from NY, N and P. Very Old Friends, N, the shortest spitfire you will ever meet, a good soul, and her spouse P, possibly a zen master. Some may will remember how I went to France and threatened to become a goat herder, I was at their wedding.

I broke my fever with several shots of tequila at our local Irish watering hole. That seemed to do the trick and then I was ready to roll (straight into bed)

So right, so then here we are, in the year 2006. Nothing's different but the date, but subtly so, in the spaces beneath, everything shifts a centimeter, everything has arched it's back a little and shaken out the cobwebs a little and so when you rise to the french toast and the mimosas the surface is the same but everything has changed. Just like that. Tick of a clock, tick of a year, tock of my youth. But in the chasm where bitterness might seep, comes the honey of promise, sticky with enthusiasm and buckled with hope. A new year! Another twelve months to get it right! And naked so naked, maybe you will fall in love! And get to have a lot of sex!! You never know! It's January and it's raining but it will stop and the headlands are already green and bombs are exploding elsewhere, but here there is the Engineer with the lethal smile who has asked for a date, so you never know, Emma, this, this could be your year.

If not my claw foot tub remains impertable. Another year of baths, I am without a doubt, very clean.