December 31, 2014: For Days of Long Ago

Charlestown, MA. I’m sitting at the End of the World, nursing a 9am whiskey.

In 15 hours another year will be lost to time, another year committed to memories.
It’s New Year’s Eve in 2014. The world is about to end

You know…I met the Satrio Buddha. Yeah, they have him hidden. They’ve had him since 1975. He’s pretty nice, actually. Not jolly like you’d expect the Buddha to be. But gracious.

Thousands of years of prophecy are coming to a head here in this bar.

I need a drink. A strong one. I just came from Kiviuq’s funeral and fuck…was that depressing or what. You could hear people crying in Canada…and I was in Greenland. Line them up.

The bartender smiles softly, pouring drinks and wiping up spills.
He nods at every prediction, agrees with every end of the world prophecy that his patrons confess to witness.

It’s like this every year. Every New Year’s Eve they come around talking about Hopi doomsdays and God’s Twilight. And yet, one year later, they’re drinking here and I’m pouring them drinks.

Would we really know if the world ended? Is it going to go out with a bang or whimper into a corner and die?

Here, have a pint on me. We’ll toast together with our cups of kindness.

I tap my glass against his and we drink.

We drink to new Buddhas and dying tricksters. We drink to a New Year and the old ones.

It’s New Year’s Eve and we drink to you. 2014 blows away and the new year is upon us, creeping like a shadow, ready to usher us into the unknown.

Sláinte.