I’m not certain how you track time or the turn of a decade, but I consider years ending in 1 as the beginning of a new ten-year stint. I don’t believe we went from BC to AD with a zero year, so for me 2021 is the end of an old and beginning of a new decade. Believe me, I am happy to see this decade end. The last painful four years have filled this decade, which began with such promise, with animus the likes I have never known even having lived in the decade of Tricky Dicky. So good riddance I say.
I know that there is still a lot of leftover crap that will continue to leak, if not splash or flood, into the new one, but I feel a turn for the better. I am hoping for a new version of the Jazz Age – a burst out, a sense of abject frivolity not seen since the twenties, the end of Prohibition and the last big flu pandemic. People going to clubs where they serve cocktails, not beer and wine; drinking in stylish attire. I look forward to a new rise of intelligentsia – maybe even new versions of the Algonquin Round Table with the intellectual lights of our times conversing, sharing new ideas and perspectives, questioning the status quo and spreading hope in concert with a deep reverence for smart. I am done with dumb.
I think I have lost intelligence points over the last four years and not merely from aging but having to listen regularly to lies of a man who thinks he is the smartest man you will ever know, a stable genius, who has the vocabulary of an eighth grader and the competence carnival ride attendant. “Yeah, sure the room spins really fast and you laugh and it’s fun. No one ever throws up and no one has ever died. Believe me I really smart and can remember five things in a row – fridgerator, spit, elephant, girl and…what was I saying. Oh, you’ll be safe. Trust me. That’ll be $5,000 dollars, but you’ll get a red hat when it’s over, as long as you don’t throw up or talk bad about the ride to anyone. Sign this NDA waiver please.”
I look forward to meals out without hazmat suits, when I can laugh with the person who is six inches from me, not six feet. Where I can exchange hugs like Romeo says to Juliet’s inquiry “Why what satisfaction canst thou have tonight? Why, the exchange of my love vows for thine.” I want to exchange my love vows with people who can reciprocate in person, not through a screen or subliminally. I don’t like intuitive love; I want it direct and in person – tactile, tremulous with textures and smells and tastes all adhering to it and to me when it is over.
I want to make memories that have substance. That are born from reality and not just the flirtations of my mind. I want to hear laughter, real and not tuned through the tinnyness of earbuds or headphones. Boisterous laughter brought on by some ribald joke or a comment made at my expense that doubles me over or makes me fall from the chair, as I have been known to do if it was well-turned enough.
I want to cook a meal that feeds my friends around my table. Creating stains from tomato sauce and wine and grease and coffee spilled on the tablecloth. I want wine or some other beverage to come out someone’s nose so we can laugh uproariously like watching a good three stooges’ moment. I want to go to a comedy club and listen while some filthy or clean comic takes me for a riotous ride filled with laughter that comes from all sides and roils up, building on itself. I want a whirlwind.
It is what has been lacking for the last ten months if not the last four years. We have been harried by storms and clouds and so many hurricanes we resorted to naming after the Greek alphabet. Could you ever imagine running out of hurricane names. We have been battered by social storms and racial furies. We have been flooded by hunger and electronic education and computer baby-sitters. We have had torrential reigns of voting and counting and whining and couping and the bills coming due cannot be paid.
I want a whirlwind that sweeps the stale air out of our lives and leaves the table clean of debris. That scatters our detritus and sets us on to dancing and singing in the same room, in proximity. I want a whirlwind that brings fresh air, that buoys our hopes and spirits so we can look at each other through clear lenses and spins us around in waltz. I want a whirlwind that blows away the negatives that have filled our days – the good people on both sides, the stand back stand ups - back to the shadows from where they emerged, allowing decency even in disagreement to fill our halls and educate our minds.
I want a whirlwind and I am impatient for its coming. I want a whirlwind and I want it now.