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On New Year's Eve my mind was on other things: one day earlier while having
dinner, all teary-eyed due to an excess of sambal badjak, the news had
reached me of the death of a friend. And although our Western way of
thinking can be quite helpful in situations like these, knowing as we do
that eras are merely artificial numbers, I am still finding it difficult to
admit that decorum lends a hand, or rather, is pivotal to the failed attempt
at social organisation which we call society, or perhaps that should be the
other way around, or does it really matter?
A few days later on my return from the funeral, a freshly arrived New Year's card from Olav Cleofas van Overbeek happened to catch my eye. The master of austerity had taken a photograph of a blank canvas sitting in anticipation on the easel, flanked by a clean palette with pristine dollops of paint. A sense of relief seized me and I started howling with laughter. New Year is something completely bogus, and then again it isn't. The way one breathes in and out, the way day breaks and night falls, the way one laughs and cries is exactly the same way one puts in one's years: by wearing them out, leaving them behind, plugging away regardless of sorrow, the cadence and the clean slate, it is thanks to them that we survive. And so I hereby wish you the very best for 2001. |