So let's raise the bar and our cups to the stars.

Tis the season for taking stock cradle to the grave and here I suppose is as good a place as any in which to apply heat to bone and savor the marrow. It used to be my year was measured in itineraries but now time's lost all meaning and consequently I think I'm younger than I am though I actually feel so very much older. In Two-Aught-Twelve I was too unwell to travel and that's a habit that's stuck through Thirteen; airports are strange and unfamiliar places to me now about which on the whole I feel rather quite sad. This is the year I didn't go to Scotland (as was the year before and the year before that and the year before that) and once one starts marking time thusly does it even really matter? This is the also year I didn't die (again) though there were times I very much wish I had; this was a year of very great loss indeed and very little comfort.

So if not by air or by sea how to mark the twelvemonth? I cried tears to fill an ocean. I read a thousand pages of Shakespeare. I split an entire box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts with Dave. I was and was not; I was within and without; I am not entirely convinced I survived the year intact. There are flakes of plaster scattered about my living room floor, and a question I asked though I didn't even care about the answer: Replace the upstairs carpet or re-do the kitchen? I change linens, I oil the butcher's block, I have a cup of Earl Grey, a tiny brown pill. There are things one does because one must, but is it even worth the effort? 2013 suggests perhaps it is not.

And this, you see, is why I've stopped writing in this space. I'm really quite content when I'm not reducing my days to useless words. There is power in the pen and silence both, and 2014 will find me choosing my weapons with care.