Cycling in the South Bay

“Happy New Year!” they command, an odd way to obtain happiness, as if it were the natural consequence of fiat. But I ask this: What’s new about it?

Yes, there’s a new number appended to this strange calculation that began with the murder of a Jewish heretic.

And yes, the relative position of earth and sun have reached the same point, almost, that they did 365.25 days ago, but does that make it new? Especially since it’s been rotating exactly the same way for several billion years?

Last night I fell asleep around 7:30 and was awakened to fireworks announcing the newness. People newly drunk and stoned. People newly welcoming, at this exact moment as I type, the bitterest, but far from the last, hangover of 2023. People celebrating resolutions they will never keep. A tired old earth, not a new earth, grimly awaiting another day of global warming, environmental ravishment, war, poverty, hunger, disease, end times that just can’t seem to ever end, and more avid recreational cyclists squeezed into sausage skins extolling the virtues of gravel.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

Ecclesiastes 1:9

I won’t enjoin your happiness in this arbitrarily numbered sequence of the earth’s spin, but I can hope for it, and I will.

---

END

Comments are closed.