“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
– T.S. Eliot
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The year of 2010 just didn’t go according to plan.
Then again, looking back, I can’t recall a single year of my life yet that has. That’d just be spooky and weird if nothing unexpected happened. Not to mention boring, eh?
For the two residents of the Rasmenian Nation, the year of 2010 began with chaos, anger and the frustration of international and cross country travel in the dead of winter. Indeed, our last days of 2009 and first few days of 2010 were spent engaged in family squabbles, re-routed Greyhound buses and bumming around airports. Oh… and I was fucking sick, choking on and snorting my own phlegm, which is just as sexy as it sounds.
But, we summoned every bit of patience we had and made our way There & Back Again.
So, we eventually made our way back home, back to land of baguettes and stinky cheese. Things began to calm down, but I found myself dealing with the pissing and moaning of the occasional reader whose delicate sensibilities cause their rectum to tighten up and cause pain at any mention of the word “fuck.” I don’t fucking get what the fuck that is all about, but in fucking February, I found myself touting the all the fucking benefits of the F-Bomb and taking Pride in my Profanity.
In March, we went Storming the Beaches of Normandy, taking a somber yet enlightening look at some of the WWII memorials and the Mémorial de Caen.
In April, we took a brief tour of the Mont Saint Michel and because it was absolutely necessary, I called Bullshit on Your Writer’s Block and no, I still don’t believe it exists.
In May, while Olivier and I were enduring some chaos from outside forces and that annoying thing people refer to as “real life,” there was still plenty of good shit happening – the number of rejection letters I was receiving was beginning to decrease, while the acceptances were increasing. I owed a great deal of that to a teacher of mine from elementary school, so I decided to tell you all about how Mr. O’Donnell & the Old Yellow Paper helped to make a goofy little kid into a grown-up writer.
As it does every year, June eventually came along and that’s when I went off on my tangent about how a couple of years spent living in Paris helped me to become a bit of germaphobe.
I got pissed off in July. Right around the 4th of July, I saw a few Americans who were ignorant enough to mistake xenophobia and French bashing for patriotism. Of course, this started me off on a lengthy and colorful rant directed at the French Bashers & their exposed ignorance.
The month of August is a time to slow down. The entire country of France relaxes, most people are off on vacations and I was no exception. But I did get to thinking about the real & surreal aspects of Paris.
September took a bit of a somber turn, but it was necessary. It was time to purge all of the bullshit and bad times that had been smacking Olivier and me down. It was time for me to vent a little bit about how 2010 wasn’t this fun and amazing year that we had planned it to be. The year got off to a turbulent start, but it was the Cruel Summer that really knocked us down.
But staying down is for saps and cowards. So we got back up and analyzed the Science of Dry Humping.
Then it was time for more ranting and finger pointing about my Misanthropic Expat Syndrome.
Before we knew it, it was December again. As is now the custom, I was fucking sick, choking on and snorting my own phlegm. Rather than making the big travel plans, hanging around airports and sleeping in bus stations, we stayed home in France. Oh, and we finally published that book I’d been writing.
So… now what?
Even though the year of 2010 has been put behind all of us, its detritus still lingers. I suppose that it will for quite some time to come. While it’s fun to look back on some of it, I don’t want to dwell in it. There are new stories to write, new books to get cracking on, new places to go, new things to make fun of and whole slew of pet peeves and bits of jackassery that I have yet to address.
If you’ve missed any fragments of the previous year, have fun going back and having a look. If you’d rather read some of the fiction, then maybe you’d prefer to check out the book.
Otherwise, stick around. Even though the chances of my plans for 2011 going awry are rather high, I still plan on posting here with a bit more frequency. No, not every single day, because… well, fuck that. Seriously.
I’m sure that in many ways, this year will be much like last year – some of it will be good and some of it will be a bitch. There will be the expected and the unexpected; more of the same and a bit of the new. But the stories we’ll tell and look back on at the end of it all will be different… those bits of detritus that stick to us that we’ll carry with us into the next one. The real fun is in gathering those bits up.
Giddy-Up.