Day Thirtyeight

Last night I dreamt that it was Christmas.

I've never been much excited about Christmas, having never celebrated it during my first ten years of childhood. I didn't even know it was December the 25th. When I came to Australia and it was December the 25th someone told me "it's Christmas". I said "oh, okay".

I used to be giddy on New Year's Eve. Sometimes I still am, because everyone else is, much like the way I feel drunk among drunks, even if I hadn't drank any alcohol myself. A new year means awkwardly adjusting to using a new suffix when filling in the date field of forms. Means safety-net privileges are reset. Means an excuse to stay up and drink and go out.

Last NYE I was curled up with Jez on the couch. We watched the TV make a list of stuff that happened in '07 and count down the last 10 seconds. When it was 12:00 am we said "happy new year" to each other and went to sleep. It was nice, for a change, not to be stuck somewhere trying to find a way home through the entire population of Australia.

The year before that I spent NYE at Circular Quay, sitting on rock-hard ground for 6 hours and washing down $5 pies that were cold in the centre with $6-a-bottle Mount Franklins. I felt extremely ripped off by the small compensation (in the form of fireworks) of being constricted to 0.5 metres squared of space for a quarter of a day. People kiss through the countdown for the lame reason that they would have kissed through a new year. I got bored and opened my eyes to watch the first bit of fireworks.

I'd like to be somewhere very far away from the city this NYE.