adam
Thursday, January 1
What a stupid thing to say. Happy New Year. Say it twenty times in your head and see if you sound silly - I guarantee you will. Happy New Year. Are we hoping for the new year to be happy, or just stating the fact that as of 12.19 am it is still largely happy? Of all the semantically confused idioms we thoughtlessly pepper our speech with, this must be the most incoherent, the most semantically confused of them all. Maybe the incoherence is the only real way to describe the only real way a human being can approach the new year - worn, tired, terrified but perhaps just a little unable to shake off a terrible hope that things will maybe be better.
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2 comments:
The key is not to think about it, Adam. Besides, it's a phrase that even drunks and Americans (and drunk Americans) understand. And how about approaching the new year with some quiet optimism?
But if you insist... best wishes for 2009!
That hope isnt terrible per se, only the possibility that it might be in vain is. But apart from that, it keeps people vaguely alive, I think.
And also, I think incoherence sometimes makes things clearer. But anyway, happy new year, whatever that means! (Probably that the new year will be largely happy, even at all the 12.19 ams to come)
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