Thursday, December 2020 - Reflecting on the three weeks remaining in 2020.

With less than three weeks between this evening and New Year’s Day all I can think about is January 1, 2020 ––––– well before whispers and murmurs of Covid-19 had fully-infiltrated New York’s collective consciousness. I stayed in the last New Year’s eve of the teens, December 31, 2019 –––– the decade after the Aughts and before the Roaring Twenties, take two.

So much had happened from 2010 through the very end of 2019, my first full decade as an adult; and the first time I witnessed ten years slip by while forming experiences and memories that I could fully comprehend and reflect upon. The Nineties carried me through age four through fourteen; and the Aughts pulled be across the bridge over age fourteen through twenty-four; but the tens (the teens): when I travelled from age twenty-four to thirty-four –––– those were the first ten years that I was all-in for.

Mostly what I remember about New Year’s Eve last year is a feeling of wonder –––– the absence of knowing. Knowing that I wanted Curlew Quarterly to continue and grow; knowing that I wanted to remain in New York –––– and to get to improve upon my ability to actually enjoy the city’s rhythm and energy; and knowing that I had grown, evolved and matured over the last ten years; though otherwise, not know much else about what the next ten years would hold.

I just kept thinking, “‘2020’, how is this even possible, can that date even be real?” I remember when Y2K was a thing! Not to mention B2K. I remember having a conversation with a friend while in middle school about the year 2010 –––– a year that felt as though it existed in a far away land, where it was resting just before the cusp of the abyss. Now that abyss is ten years long gone. And in three weeks’ time, the same can and will be said for this year.

What happened this year? Who was I? What became of this city? How does anyone decide what to write about when so much has happened and is happening all at once If New York became a ghost town this year, then these ghosts, my god, they’ve had so much to say. So much.