Typically, my New Year's Eves are spent alone in my parents sun room, drinking ouzo and watching Dick Clark and Mtv. Usually, I complain that I wish were somewhere exciting. This year, I am alone in my flat drinking gin (when in Rome), and I decide at 11 PM to go somewhere exciting.

I take a shower and shave with my rosewater shaving cream. Thus my face smells like as well as resembles loukoumi. I head out to the tube, which for one night has non-stop service. It skips quite a few of the stops, but this is more or less acceptable because so does the subway in NYC and the El in Chicago at night, and it stops at Bethnal Green which is all I really care about.

The Central Line is surprisingly not crowded. When I switch to the Piccadilly Line at Holborn it is a bit more so, but nothing like rush hour. There are some drunk Brazilians with their arms interlocked swaying in a circle singing, "Ole, Ole, Ole, Oleeeeeeeee." Not much different that post soccer game hooligans on the tube.

I get out at Leicester Square, and the streets are jammed with people. Everyone is wandering towards Trafalgar square. The pace and determination seem like the zombies headed to the mall in "Dawn of the Dead." Only spontaneous outbursts of jubilation break the trance. Or rather, they are the trance.

I smoke 10 cigarettes on the walk. I don't have any booze with me. I am filtered with the other zombie revelers through several perpendicular lines of police men looking none to comfortable, only smiling when the occasional person stops to wish them a "Happy New Year." The sound of helicopters is overhead and there are police announcements from a bullhorn telling everyone which streets are inaccessible. Finally Trafalgar Square is surrounded by metal gates with one entrance down the steps which leads past several lines of neon bobbies. Something like this:




I descend into Trafalgar square and I see:


I shortsightedly didn't take a picture, but Nelson's column is covered in scaffolding and blue wooden boards so that it looks like a prison guard tower. There is also a redlight ticker with lots of useful messages like: "Be on the alert for suspicious behaviour." Usually suspicious behavior slips right by me too. At the west end of the square is a huge monitor showing the great fireworks displays in Sidney, China (as if they give a fuck er, fudge), Moscow (wait... why not the 14 there?), and Paris. Also lots of useful interviews with no sound.

Finally, the countdown begins... I can barely make out the numbers on the screen.
10...

9...

8...

7...

6...

5...

4...

3...

2...

1.........



Brilliant eh? That's Trafalgar Square at 12:00 AM. The cloudy sky burns red. I'm sure just like 1666 AD. I can hear the fireworks, I can see the red sky, but I can only see them on the big screen. That's it. Nothing. The Brits don't even know the words to Auld Lang Syne. Granted, it's written in Scots.. but that's not the same as Scottish Gaelic, it's just a dialect of English. And I think most people from Boston know the words to Dixie.

People are hugging and kissing. Hooray for being alive in another year. Hooray for being here. Hooray for being. I suppose it is better to be happy for no reason than sad for no reason... But for me, happiness is contingent upon accomplishment, in the broadest possible terms. There comes a time in everyone's life when countdowns as well as countups are unwelcome. Being so far away from any such, I can't say I welcome temporal markers in the least. People searching too hard for transcendence seem to cause a lot of the world's problems, and it isn't hard to see why. Sex, death, ideas... all can be driven just as much from the opposite end of the human condition as from the baser instincts... and this motivation is the more powerful sort. Anyway, ontos halepos estin, when one's ousia binds their epithumontos. Biology is destiny?

I squeeze back up the stairs, through the cold drizzle up the Strand. I catch a glimpse of the fireworks between the buildings:



How could I not deduce that the fireworks would be over the Thames near the London Eye and Parliament? Maybe I would have gone to Trafalgar anyway, since everyone does. The lure of the mall is just too great. The inveterate suburbanite I am.

I walk back through Covent Garden and pay three quid for some mulled wine. The spices are a bit much for my throat, now a bit too raw from the smoking. As soon as I try to take a sip, my abused epithelium rejects it and I spray myself with wine. There is no pretty face in the glass, she will come tomorrow.

I get to Holborn and there is a Korean guy selling chicken and noodles for four quid. I'm pretty hungry. I tell him I'll take one. He asks how many are in my party. I AM the party, give me the noodles.

I gobble them down and home with some more gin and go to bed already with a headache.

The prospect of making it to church for St. Basil are slim:



We'll see.

??.??.? Palladina Ruskaya 0rz