On to the bonfire

2005 passes before me, and I reassemble the months but they still don't make sense, in any order.

There's an episode of X Files (episode 3x04 actually), called Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. In it Peter Boyle plays a guy who can see the specifics of people's deaths. Mulder asks how he gained this gift. Bruckman explains that he became obsessed with the death of the Big Bopper:

Imagine all the things that had to occur, not only in his life, but in everybody else's, to arrange it so on that particular night, the Big Bopper would be in a position to live or die depending on a flipping coin.

I look at 2005 in much the same way. So many things had to come together to make up this year. Twelve months ago, the threads of my life were in such disarray. I had similar introspection then, picking apart the year, examining the details. There were some pretty terrible events in this year. I mourn parts of the life before the storm. I mourn for the New Orleans we were all a part of. Despite the bad, I got to know some pretty special people this year, too. Many of them are gone now, off to other locales. Some I haven't seen in months, since a hurricane ripped the threads of a million lives apart. I've come to rediscover one I hadn't known for a long time. Here I sit, on the final day of the year, in my living room, watching LSU beat the pine tar out of Miami (HA, I hate Miami). What a wondrous tragic path that has brought me here.


I've been doing next to nothing for the past week. Christmas really was wonderful. We came in to NOLA on Monday, moving permanently back from Lafayette. No more commutes. No more "other" schools. Well, that's not true, as the girls will have a third school starting next week. Since the plant was closed this week, I anticipated being off. You know where I'm going with this, of course. I went in to work this morning. I was the only person in the building. Except for the mouse. Who was not stirring, just running. So I did my thing, outshining some managers by showing them you actually can plan things with common sense in mind, plus do it on a company holiday.

Moreover, I was at work because, on the home front, I have no phone, no internet, and (as of Christmas Eve) no mobile phone. I won't lie, I've enjoyed being freed from my digital tethers. Alas, that will end on Tuesday, back at the grind.

Tomorrow evening, however, will be the ceremonial New Year's Eve bonfire on the neutral ground of Orleans Avenue. I have my doubts about the Mid City tradition this year. Rumor has it these shiny azure shields known as FEMA roofs are flammable motherfucking napalm sheets. Of course, that would only happen if a firework were to fall on it. No chance of that with mad clan of firebugs two blocks down.

That reminds me, I need to buy some fireworks.

Happy New Year.

oooooooh, fire

My father-in-law just brought over a hundred and fifty dollars worth of fireworks.