“i would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former ss monsters
However since it is
new year’s eve
and i have lip cancer
i will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance”

• Leonard Cohen

What a great little poem!  It’s odd that New Year’s Eve is a time for optimism in the form of new beginnings and  resolutions, yet the two poems that I know about it are both dark and pessimistic.  The other one is the Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy, which I liked so much as a kid that I memorized it.  Leonard Cohen’s is a lot funnier.

Well 2020 has arrived – and so begins the 7th decade I will have lived at least part of.  I realize that the number of the year and decades and such are only fabricated by and for humans.  There won’t be any sudden shift, and any changes that do come along will be either bumps in the road or things that were evolving into being.  Still, I wonder what sort of things are going to occur this year, and a milestone sort of day like today seems like a good time to wonder.

Soon enough will come the impeachment of the world’s smartest man, Donald Trump.  He is so smart he refuses to give his accusers the evidence they have requested, and refuses to let the witnesses who know the story testify.  Sounds like good justice to me!  I’ll have to remember these tactics if I ever get in trouble.  Sorry officer, if I hand over the murder weapon you will probably find me guilty, so I won’t.  Seems reasonable.  Oh yeah, and my neighbour saw the whole thing, so I’m not letting him talk to anyone.  I hope for the sake of the American people they throw that cyber bullying asshole, his spoiled, below average brats and his frosted over wife out in the street.  His cronies run the Senate, so he will almost certainly get acquitted, but who knows.  First round’s on me if they toss him out.

Here at home we have our own political drama.  I’m hoping they get the Trans Mountain expansion built soon.  It’s only a twinning of an existing pipeline, so it won’t be the ecological disaster the tiny minority think it will be.  It has proven over its 66+ years to be more reliable than sending oil by train.  Anyway, most people are in favour of it – a situation in which democracy should just take effect and have it accepted.  Hopefully it will relieve the pent up angst of the Wexit people, who want to stomp off and start a landlocked empire of beef and oil and hockey teams that disappoint.  And in Ottawa we have a minority government that may outlive this year, but very well may not.  I think if the Conservatives had a leader in place who could tie his own shoes, they would have already tried to force another election to punt the Liberal leader who may just be able to tie his.  It lacks the flash of the American problems, but our problems usually do, mercifully.

My favourite TV show, The Simpsons, is rumoured to be getting cancelled after 31 years.  The 27 year Canadian Stanley Cup drought is due to continue unless there is a Biblical-level intervention, as Canada’s teams are all pretty mediocre.  Some of them can score, but defense wins championships, and our teams let in bushels of goals regularly. Personally, I am hoping to enter a CBC writing contest for which I will need to submit a story by the end of February.  I don’t expect to move on to round 3 of the NYC Midnight Microfiction contest as I think my second story – the sci-fi one – isn’t that good really, so that should free up a little time.  My fabulous partner informs me she is going to win the lottery, so that should put our bills in order.   No investors have come by lately to buy our house for more than it’s worth, and this year it’s likely none will.  Our plans for a summer holiday so far have been about taking a road trip across the Prairies to look at significant family places, as we both have older generations from there.  Hopefully we won’t need passports to get into Alberta!

As for all the other stuff, changes are no doubt coming all over the place.  The unseen undercurrents are pulling every aspect of our lives this way and that, but we have no idea which way things will go.  I hope that for the majority of us, the tectonic forces tugging at our lives push us up against health and prosperity, and the toxic nonsense of the world goes sliding away.  Happy New Year!