01.01.08
The Morning After
(Xbox Live Update: Gamercard is back to normal! Yay! And the little thing on the Xbox page reads “Up and Running”, so hopefully I’ll be (theoretically) able to play online matches! YAAAAY! Not that I’m going to, since I have Eternal Sonata and Senko no Ronde to go through, mind, but if I wanted to, I could.)
[Don't forget that today starts the Split Updates. I made a post on the LJ about the gaming and anime plans for the year, specifically Ai Yori Aoshi and Eternal Sonata. Head over there at your leisure.]
Well, it’s the new year, folks, and after much hype and talk about it, 2008 is finally here. All those ridiculous discussions about what we were going to plan for this year are now, hopefully, past us, as we embark on what’s been called the big, scary, fun adventure ahead of us. Many of you are probably still asleep as I write this, and I don’t blame you; I figure after 2007, most of us deserve a little bit of rest. Me? I’ve done something I haven’t really done before: I opened the curtains in my living room, and I’m sitting here in the darkness. Waiting.
My living room window faces east, you see, and previously it was a bit of a nuisance. I remember when I first moved in here in August of ‘06, and I hadn’t thought to bring curtains or anything else besides my computer or a couple of blankets– the circumstances were rushed, mind, and I had been forced to spend the night here before I was really prepared. When the sunlight caressed my face early that summer morning, and I looked out into it, I will admit to being somewhat annoyed. “I’m exposed,” I thought. “This place is going to be totally exposed unless I do something. This is a problem.” My mom sent along some heavy curtains, and I put them up presently– blocking out the eastern sunlight. There have been days I’ve wished I hadn’t picked an east-facing apartment, but today? Today is definitely not one of them.
We always look to the beginning of the year as a time of new beginnings, and yet we’re too smashed from our celebration– our mourning– of the old year to really get up and appreciate the new one’s arrival. We have another three hundred and sixty five sunrises, we think– what’s this one more? (I didn’t miscount; it’s a leap year, remember?) But there’s something inherently beautiful about the first sunrise, I think. There’s something in those first rays of sunlight– which functionally are identical to any other castoffs from our closest star, being simply some electromagnetic radiation that’s the result of nuclear fusion– something there that makes it feel different. Makes it feel, I don’t know, more significant.
I really do wish I was asleep again. I really wish I could just go back to sleep and ignore the first sunrise just as I have every other time. I suppose if I really wanted that, though, I would have shut off my alarm clock. Instead, I’ll just sit here for a little while longer, safe and warm and calm, and look out the window.
And wait. Because, for me, until that sun rises? The clock hasn’t yet started ticking down, and the world is still full of hope.
Happy New Year’s, folks.