Happy New Year ...

Happy New Year?

I dread the milestones of a new year. Will I make it to September 10th? Will I want to?

I've tried to adopt the D. H. Lawrence technique of dealing with guilt: make orange marmalade. Immediate action not theology or psychology. I don't particularly care for marmalade.

No real progress on the JonBenet case. No real progress on the marmalade either.

So I feed the dogs and I feed the feral cats and I wish them all a Happy New Year. Its the thing to do, you know. Wish a hungry cat who copes with the dangers of a feral existence a Happy New Year as if he understood English and understood what a calendar was. We have rules that have to be followed in a civilized society.

Year end review:
Ryan Ferguson: Still doing hard time in prison.
Owen Rooney: Still missing from Grand Forks, BC, Canada but some promising reports in the Lac La Bish area of Alberta.
Luke Mitchell: Still doing a Life Sentence for not having left his dna at the scene of a murder while the three males who did leave their dna at the scene have never been considered suspects.

Well, Here it is ... again.

So once again. It is September 10th. I wake up a bit after two in the morning. Its very quiet. I guess its a good time to contemplate death. Death and cowardice. Oh, don't get me wrong, its not the only time of the year that such thoughts descend heavily upon me. It is, however, that anniversary wherein such thoughts are inescapable and overwhelming.

I know I am likely to survive this day. I have in past years and it does become easier as time goes by, yet guilt feelings overwhelm me this day each year. I engage in the usual tricks of avoiding as much as possible the thoughts of all the media comments there will soon be. I think of my own problems. I scream silently about my rage on other matters and I declare to myself that I am not to blame. Others have of course told me that it is not my fault. I know that they are right yet my knowledge of the correctness of their views brings little solace.

I face this anniversary. Its inescapable. I long for escape of course. Given my age and health I will indeed find an escape at some point in time. It may well be soon. I look forward at times to my escape of this day. I often hope that such escape will indeed come soon to me. It will be a good thing when I no longer have to experience this day each year. I mentally re-live some moments of dread. I mentally trek to a pay phone and imagine myself actually making the anonymous call that I had contemplated. In my mind on each anniversary I get past that apartment door threshold without thoughts of criminal charges or insufficient evidence. I re-live the looking up of a phone number and nearly making that non-anonymous call. I re-live the disorientation and physical collapse of utter exhaustion. Yet amidst all the thoughts of this anniversary I still experience the hopeless rage of my failure.

Time heals all wounds? No. Time diminishes their intensity but it does not heal them.