It's odd that we put so much stock in the passage of one year to the next - which, after all, is just one day passing into another. But that is what all momentous things are: singular moments that stand for more than themselves. Looking back on an entire year is an oversimplification by necessity. We take the moment between days and make it stand for the old year and the coming one.
So here: I'll play this game. I'll choose one moment that defines the year. It's ludicrous to make one story stand for twelve months, but will my admitting that it's ludicrous make things better? At least all my cards are on the table.
Mark and I went to a movie a few months ago, just because. We looked up the movies that were showing and picked the one that sounded most promising, knowing nothing about it. (May I note: this is the best way to go to a movie. Great expectations often lead to great disappointments.)
We enjoyed ourselves. We were almost the only people in the room, and when the credits rolled, the three or so other people left pretty quickly. As is our habit, we stayed and discussed the plot and the characters and the general execution of the movie, and a dark room with comfortable seats is one of the best places for such discussion. (We often lie in bed at night and hash through the plots and plot holes in various stories, which explains why we are so sleep-deprived.)
And the exciting end-of-movie music was playing, and it was just us, so there was no point in keeping our voices down. After a while we started reading off names from the endless reel of credits. "Peter Chadwick!" we said to each other. "Theodora Windelsen! Second assistant to the cameraman, and an excellent job of assisting it was!"
All the way to the end we sat there, shouting out as many names as we could read off and extolling the efforts of each. It was late and we were having a good time and getting sillier as it got later. While it was freeing to be shouting into a dark, empty room, it was also humbling to think that we were sending out our punch-drunk praises to real people. This movie upon which we had spent a few spare hours - it had been assembled by a huge army. At some point we passed from giddy exuberance into genuine appreciation of the work that had been done. Gordon Fines, whoever he is, had worked hard at being the best boy grip, whatever exactly that entails.
Lots of things happened last year, of course. It was twelve whole months. As surely as it takes an army to make a movie, it takes days piled upon days to make a year. You can't commend everyone, but you can call out as many names as the upward crawl of credits will allow. I'll mention watching Olympic figure skating at the house of friends, running through a field on a summer evening after participating in a wedding, caroling at the house of neighbors who stood on their porch barefoot in the freezing cold and not only sang along, but harmonized - and you'll know that what I'm really talking about is something too complex to be neatly summarized. Some parts were terrible. Some parts were worth remembering. One time, we shouted appreciations to an empty room.
And now, we start again.
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