Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! No, I'm not in Times Square this evening--rather, I'm as far from it as I can be. I'm at home snug as a bug watching Moonstruck. I can't believe that tomorrow it will be 2008. A few years ago I read an old novel set at the turn of the 20th century. I loved the way the author described the changing of the year. Granted, this year is not the birth of a new century, but the same sentiment applies.. When does the new year begin? How does time pass by, and where does it go?

"The funny thing was that you could not, however hard you thought, lay your finger on the moment when the new century would be born. Imogen used to try, lying in bed before she went to sleep. One second you said, "We of the 19th century;" the next second you said, "We of the 20th century." But there must be a moment in between, when it was neither; surely there must. A queer little isolated point of time, with no magnitude, but only position... The same point must be between one day and the next, one hour and the next... all points in time were such points... but you could never find them... always you either looked forward or looked back... you said, "now--now--now," trying to catch now, but you never could... and such vain communings with time lead one drowsily into sleep." (from Told By An Idiot, by Rose Macauley, 1923)

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