The 2021 Meme

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 16:44:07 GMT

Sons began texting each other around 3 in the morning—midnight California time—on our shared texting channel: Love you guys SO MUCH! 2022 is the year of the DiHareumblio Clan! (“DiHareumblio” being a portmanteau of our three very different last names.)

This was Very Sweet, of course, but also Kinda Annoying since I’d been deep in the arms of Morpheus, but now I was awake, which meant I was forced to watch Don’t Look Up in its entirety, a movie I was certain I wouldn’t like.

And I was right.

Since everybody else on the planet ❤️LUVS❤️ Don’t Look Up, this introduced a certain degree of edgy outsider-ness into the opening moments of 2022.

Did I dislike it only because everybody else ❤️LUVED❤️ it? Or was it a really sucky, pandering movie, oblivious to the irony that it was exactly the type of simpering propaganda that it ostensibly warned its viewers against?

I fell back to sleep before I could resolve this question.

And dreamed of Erica.

Other things, too, but that very last image was Erica—very blonde, very soignee, very managerial. Erica had been my Tai Kwon Do instructor once and also my lover for a briefer period of time, and I had been thinking of her on and off throughout the last week of 2021. Thinking that she’d died. (She is somewhat older than me.)

If she died, I wouldn’t know it. Erica doesn’t do social media.

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As a sidebar, I’ll note that I leave my phone on at night in case either of the sons needs bail money.

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Anyway, here is the New Year’s Meme I have been doing forever. I copped this meme from alicey when she was in high school. Now she’s the soon-to-be mother-of-two and a big-deal tax attorney who comes to LJlandia no more.

Is LJlandia really Never Never Land?

1. What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?

I went to the Jersey Shore. After Labor Day. It was the very best time to go:

I explored a corn maze. I didn’t get lost:

I went to the Sheep & Wool Festival. I bought a fabulous hand-loomed coat:

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Didn’t make any resolutions last year. Won’t make any resolutions this year either.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Define “close.” Does Larry McMurty count?

5. What countries did you visit?

I stayed in this one. But I did do a fair amount of exploring.

6. What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021?

So far as material possessions go? Honestly, I have everything I want. I told the kids not to buy me anything for Christmas. To donate in my name to the Hyde Park Food Pantry and the National Network of Abortion Funds.

7. What date(s) from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Maybe “January 6th.” Just because like “9/11”, it’s one of those events that’s always referred to by its date.

Will January 6th turn out to be a big deal in the long view of history? I have no idea. I’m inclined to see it as a type of flashmob rather than an insurrection. But, of course, mobs are scary things (cf. the French Revolution.)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I got rid of the storage unit.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Can’t think of any.

10. Did you suffer any illness or injury?

No. (Knock on wood.) My health was robust throughout 2021.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

The coat.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I am fortunate indeed to have a fabulous circle of friends, all of whom are constantly behaving in ways that merit celebration. My kids are pretty fabulous, too (despite their late-night texting proclivities.)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Alicia and Janet.

If I ran across Alicia or Janet lying bleeding on a street, I’d step over them to make the yellow light. (Well. Probably not. But I’d be tempted.)

14. Where did most of your money go?

Basic living expenses. Trips—to Philadelphia, to Baltimore, and to New York City over Thanksgiving. And I made it a point throughout this year to designate 10% of my income to worthy causes. Sometimes those causes were organizations; sometimes they were Go Fund Me’s for people I know in tough circumstances.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Making retablos.

16. What song will always remind you of 2021?

Not of 2021 exactly. But of a certain tromp I did a lot of in 2021 from the Poughkeepsie side of the Walkway Over the Hudson, down into Highland in Ulster County, and back. I’ve calibrated the tromp as around five miles. (I try not to tromp more than five miles at a time because aging joints, etcetera.)

To while away the time, I would choreograph a Bob Fosse-type dance routine to an obscure instrumental by the 70s funk band War—a big favorite of mine, War. No dancers were harmed in the making of this fantasy; it all took place entirely inside my head.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) Happier or sadder? Happier.

b) Thinner or fatter? Thinner.

c) Richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Exercise. Writing.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Abstinence.

Last winter was tough. I more-or-less gave up drinking alcohol because I could tell it would be very, very easy for me to spend the entire pandemic in a drunken stupor. I’d never been much of a cannabis fan because smoking cannabis only seems to make me sleepy and tremulous, so I avoided dope, too, until finally a few weeks ago, I thought wotthehell, and made a trip to the deepest, darkest Berkshires to load up on edibles.

They’ve made a huge difference. I don’t do enough to get the psychoactive high. I just do enough to smooth out the rough edges. Nature’s own antidepressants!

20. How did you spend Christmas?

I did absolutely nothing! And I enjoyed it.

21. How did you spend New Year’s?

Supposed to have a dinner party for neighbors. But the neighbors were all sick. Colds, they thought—but, of course, COVID tests hereabout are not to be had for love or money plus even if they did just have colds, who wants to socialize with a cold?

So, in the end, it was just three of us: me, L, and Loraine.

I noticed that L seems to be slipping cognitively. Like she doesn’t seem to be able to read the instructions on the back of rice boxes, and she will repeat a story she’s just told five minutes before. She hasn’t yet slipped to the point of leaving stove burners on, so no danger to herself or others. But soon, I’m thinking. Of course, she’s 82, so not surprising.

22. Did you fall in love in 2017?

No. I think that part of life is behind me. I miss the parts where you evolve a secret, shared language of in-jokes and other snarky shorthand. And I miss being tracked.

23. How many one-night stands?

None.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

The Split.

Halt and Catch Fire.

High Maintenance.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Alicia and Janet.

26. What was the best book you read?

John McWhorter’s Nine Nasty Words.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Didn’t make any.

28. What did you want and get?

An exercise bike. A good desk chair.

29. What did you want and not get?

Like I say, I pretty much have everything I want.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

It was a pretty good year for new movies, actually. But none of them really grabbed me in an emotional sense. Maybe The Farewell?

For movies I have seen before, definitely The Man Who Fell to Earth. So very, very, heartbreakingly sad.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 69. L threw a party for me. Lots of people came. They all brought presents!

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Define “immeasurably.”

Oh, of course, it would be great to have access to some Magic Drug that could put me at the peak of the Writing Game without having to go through an hour of false starts and could-you-be-any-more-pedestrian? self-recriminations.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2021?

I always dress like a bag lady.

I have pretty good fashion taste, though. I guess I’m just not willing to invest the time it takes to be really well turned out.

34. What kept you sane?

Books, movies, art, trips, gardening, friends, kids.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Tom Waits and Matt Taibbi.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

The accumulation of wealth in the hands of a plutocracy.

37. Who did you miss?

I think a lot about dead pets, specifically Rutger and Milo. Human beings? Not so much—although I did begin thinking a lot more charitably and even affectionately about my mother this year. So many, many obstacles in her way, and I’m sure she tried to the best of her congenitally limited abilities.

(On her deathbed, my mother suddenly bolted upright. “I am a good girl!” she announced to some invisible heckler.)

Is that the same as missing someone?

38. Who was the best new person you met?

The fabulous gansje. We had a wonderful lunch together in Philadelphia. Clearly, God intended us to be next-door neighbors.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021

Everyone has an inner life as compelling to them as mine is to me.

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The 2021 Meme