It always comes to this (at least since I started a daily journal back in 1980), this time of year, looking back and then ahead, as if I could possibly make sense of what transpired over the last year and could in any way predict what might come next.
Last year on this day, I did exactly that, and what I predicted for 2012 could not have lived up to what actually transpired – for good or bad, or the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
I was so busy mourning the mysterious death of my colleague at the office, I could not have foreseen the death of my uncle, the last of the Sarti clan that helped raise me, or even the more predictable resignation of the boss at the annex office, let alone the hurricane that swept through the main office, leaving behind a landscape of devastation worse than any Sandy produced.
To say no one went unscathed is unfair and too much of an exaggeration. But it would be apt to claim she touched nearly everybody’s life in the office, some more than others, and for some such as myself, our former temporary boss and the male owner, our lives will never be the same.
There is no going back to what existed prior to her arrival – that naïve innocence we existed in that she – like the serpent in Eden – taught us all the taste of the forbidden fruit, a bite of an apple that cast us out of our comfortable illusions.
It would not be exaggerating in the least that I’m relieved this year is over and hope desperately I will not repeat the same mistakes as the new year progresses.
No doubt, there will be an aftermath, a residual of what was into what is to come – as there always is before the new year fully defines itself, the remnants of feelings we can’t shed simply by flipping the pages of a calendar.
How significant this will be depends on the depth of feelings from the year just concluded.
Since the most intense part of the year transpired during the last spring and throughout the summer, I’ve had time to adjust, to lick my wounds and get on with my life, seeing less residue even during the concluding months of the old year, so as to anticipate little dregs clinging to my heals after the ball drops in Times Square later tonight.
I’m less certain about others at the office who may still be enthralled by her charms and will need much more time to recover, if indeed, they ever can.
She has magic that leaves a wake of fairy dust behind her and leaves many living in a never never land they do not want to leave, if they could.
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