Goes to Eleven -31/12/2010

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New Years' is a strange time for us. A night bursting with hedonism eerily mixed with sombre reflection or appraisal of ourselves and the year that passed. We make these resolutions, pessimism and optimism collide badly like awkward dance partners. Something permeates the air, this year in particular a sense of overall dissatisfaction with 2010 twinged a lot of my friends stated optimism about next year.

I had trouble sharing in this feeling with people, not quite getting the angle, found myself biting my tongue even more than usual, because well, (and it's almost embarrassing to say this), I've had a really fantastic year. This year's been really good to me, and I feel grateful enough that I want to say, to the year two thousand and ten...



Thank you.

Firstly,
thank you for keeping me busy, and productive
always something to do
a deadline by to do it by

and a little less time than I need

~that's how I like it

(but don't tell anyone!)

Thank you 2010,

for being a year that gave
chances to collaborate
and made it so enjoyable
thanks for letting people find me
to write reviews and songs
play with musicians
work with great poets
who also happen to be good friends.

Thank you 2010
for all my friends
old and new
that they are still here
that they have been there
when I needed them.

In particular thank you
for bringing me closer to Steve Smart

whose as reliable as a train timetable
and spritely as a tree sloth

but I love him,
and was able to this year share
so many adventures of his
helped me discover a calling
find a purpose and place

in this world
and usually also a party to go to, too.

Thank you.

2010,

for every chance you gave me
especially all the ones I screwed up

(that was most of 'em)

then yelled at you for
then always got from you another one

and another one.

Thank you letting me see stuff like~
graffiti coming back after a grey wash
politicians cancel each other out

saw a Mc Donalds store shut down
a thunderstrike in a sunny sky

water reflecting off a roof

sunrays yawning into stone spaces

and the light
shining off that woman's hair
as she got off the tram

she will always
be moving through my mind

in slow motion.

Thank you,

year

you contained touches

another skin against mine

thank you for the times
where I woke up next to someone

and for letting these times end

without too much mess this time round.

For every good nights sleep you afforded me

and also for so many more sleepless
wired madman writing
badly.

For each sunrise you gave me

despite what I otherwise have stated
thanks for never allowing me to become jaded
even if they were always over nightclubs in St Kilda
and not from up over a beach
or snowy mountain
or umm... something.

Thank you 2010

For every glance at cleavage I got,
without being busted
(and there were lots of them too)
and yes, thank you being the year,
for one,
where no one found my porn

(that uh, that wasn't mine)

thanks for all those times
I was able to have self-affection

that ability to love myself

thank you for giving me the courage to affirm this

here,
without embarrassment.

Thank you for my bike.

For my headphone singalong disaster areas
dodging pedestrians better than hitting pitch
(much better)
and thank you for letting the two of us
run so naked through the streets together
crying freedom and peace
and letting me just... show off.

Thank you also for your spring racing carnival
more than the last
yours' particularly seemed to affirm for me

what a gift two wheels are
not to be a drunken lout whose hangs out his car

his window,

to communicate
that he can't... sadly.

Thank you, for the gifts of self expression
abilities you've given me I still need to earn back
and I working on that

still haven't found phrases

to make poverty history

but I keep saying stuff
and thank you for letting me roll with that
giving me a full 365 days to work on it.

This year,
I never told you how much I like
each time I got to put bare feet on wet grass

those pimples that I pinched out just right
every second sock not lost in the wash

times the water pressure wasn't off
each coffee that the barrista
got just right

for those hash browns in Goolwa
that you just couldn't fuck with.

Thank you for Sage Francis

for bringing him out here
right where I could see him,

for my chance to meet him and trade a few emails

so I could tell him
what it's all meant to me that he came out here
"It's been a hell of a year".

Thank you for the times I had
with my cat Jonesy before her life came to an end

thank you for my mother

who was there to help me
though she herself lost both her parents this year

I still have her
and my father
and with my two sisters we are still
whole, and family.

Thank you for every single smile I got to smile
to someone that then came back

for the good handshakes
for conversations I had
with the few beautiful woman
that weren't boring
I needed those, I really did
to remind me what I'm really not missing
and also
what I'm missing out on
will need to work on

if love's ever going to find me
again.

Now,
and this might seem incidental to you
but thank you being a year that ends
with the beginning of another,

for helping me understand a cycle
-inherent in the nature of all things.

where an end is another beginning

a crisis a gnosis

anger always later laugh at.

I've felt this year
from my guts to my nuts
to the lust and the loss
gone cold and left on hold
to the fire I caught
back burning to nought
through all of this
discovered purposes
at the end of this year

I know now, why I'm here.

So 2010
you listen to me,
never no-mind now
what them others fools have said...

Thank you for making this year, for me,
the best yet

Yet also,
giving me the determination
to make this next one,



better still.





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Also, here's last year's NYE blog as a point of reference:

2009

Happy new year! Make yours extraordinary. Please?







-Peace










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