Snippet from the barely begun novel Ghosts on the water



Another year rises from the dust and debris of the last, leaving behind flotsam and jetsam littered about like discarded candy wrappers. Resolutions are made, the same as were made the year before and perhaps the year before that as well - the first act of the year to make promises we know will be sundered. Unbidden, the mind begins to fashion lists of accomplishments that seem hollow when taken as a whole. A new list is drawn up, of things loved and cherished, and it comes out shorter than the list of accomplishments that now seem banal and inconsequential when other years are added, tacked on like footnotes to give meaning to life in small type.



After a time I stop writing. Even though there may be more to say the words have run dry and their seems to be nothing of use I can place on the page, nothing that matters. I begin to write a list o things lost, a harvest of bitter memories and long-dried tears of yesteryear. They come quickly, filling a page before I have time to do more than acknowledge then as one would a distant acquaintance on the other side of a road. They, too, do nothing. I crumple the paper up into a ball, then slowly fold it open again to shred is slowly and let it drift to the ground like snowflakes.



This year will be better, I think, as I always thought before. But now I wonder what there is for it to be better than, what heights I can reach I have not reached before. Perhaps it is only such ephemeral things I can wait before because the practical reality offers nothing it has not offered before. What kiss can compare to my first one? What loss to that of my mother? On reflection, I find I do not wish to know.



My resolution was one word, written down in a precise hand drilled into me by teachers who thought penmanship was next to cleanliness as a way of proving we are proper and right. Ennui. a resolution worth of the name, a goal worthy of achieving. I tell those who ask I made no resolution, because it is broadly true. If pressed, I say that I have resolved to write no more lists, not even for groceries. Everyone laughs, even though I don't smile.