The future isn't tomorrow anymore, so we have to at least live in today.
Certain forms of regressive shit will have to cease, so we can let go of yesterday.
As such, the following are required:

• the ability to dance like nobody's watching when CCTV is breathing right the fuck down your neck
• a differentiation between conservatism and conservationism and reconciliation of economy and ecology
  
• wire cutters, as the first step toward wresting electronic control (which your dell box is sure as hell not up to) and DIY cyberspace
• serious ass kicking boots
• a safe place to practice telepathy, or at least exercises in mass will
• spot on, personal-sized blindfold detectors
• at least seven new ways to say fuck off (particularly, "fuck off, you buy it!")
  
• sewage system overhauls to reduce - with the aim of eventual elimination - global bullshit capacity
• telescoping necks for the masses - look, they stick out!
• secret stashes of fiber optics for electrons, which want to be free
• a bell that rings anytime someone says, "hell no" and/or "no more"
• pin heads to dance on
• the ability to build revolution out of spit, perseverance, and necessity
  

This morning my city is seriously involved in the task of washing itself clean, slants of rain driving against every concrete surface and mud-beaten field, and I understand perfectly well: 2009 felt like one that could have residues. With the bravery we can muster from new possibility, we need to look up, wash clean our eyes, and start of the task of overcoming last year's inertia.

2009 paints a vivid picture of giving up and of persevering. Where we gave up, our complicity sucked dry our resolve: change is hard and things aren't so bad and who's to say that'd be better anyways? Yet here we stand again, on the precipice of prorogation, in the pre-Olympic battle if human versus corporate rights, with inquiries ringing uncomfortable truths about tasers and torture, on a marble that is not far from drowning us all.

In some sense, 09 was our dress rehearsal for the launch of this decade; in a rare moment of pattern emerging in chaos, we have somehow come full circle, this time at the same moment our most recent compass round this solar orb itself comes to an end. The question, the challenge, the imperative now is that we use what we've learned. Our rehearsal was a disaster, you know it as well as I do, yet even then, there were moments. Wear green, vote for change, re-engage, give 'em hell, and you'll tap into the power in this script. Don't, and it will fall flat. And we'll fall flat, and far.

Admitting to having done wrong is hard. Admitting to having done nothing is harder. Time to suck it up, rainy, hung-over foggies. We've had a year to absorb the situation, feel it out, and pussy foot. 2010 needs boots, says stomp on in.

He asked, "What does it mean, then?"
She laughed.
"What? You - of all people - don't think there's some kind of reason?"
"I'm not self-absorbed enough to assume I - or we - are entitled to narrative -"
He cut her off. "Bullshit."
She wanted to look wry, but the result was sadder than she could have known. "There's no narrative unless your life somehow gets ripped open and exposed, and even then, it's shredded and reconstructed because as it was, there was no plot arc. That's the goddamn problem today, everyone thinks they're entitled to be a fucking protagonist." She tried to will there to be a pause. For effect, you know. "Have a smoke?" she asked, hand out.
He gestured to a package on a shelf across the room. She looked annoyed and crossed the room, taking a cigarette and then leaning against the window. She stared out the window, wondering if it was possible to be deliberately deliberate, or if the self awareness made it superficial.
We're still young, but we're so dreary already, he thought. Beige curtains that hang like flags, symbols of having given up. "I really can't believe you can say that. When was the last time you weren't all caught up in some fucking cause or ten, help the whoever, support the fucks offs - don't pretend you don't know what I mean."
His tone was rough and he stood up and started pacing.
She held her gaze perpendicular to his, wearing an expression that made it look like she was watching her face from outside of it, every gesture slightly too calculated.
"Yeah well. You have to do something."
"No you don't. 90% of the planet - at least - are a bunch of hedonists busy gorging themselves not thinking about any of that shit. Pointless. The only people who do worry about that shit are people who think there's a point."
"I just don't want to be embarrassed if I ever have to explain how I spent it."
"Spent what?"
"Oh, whatever cliche, the time I had."
"So it's guilt."
"Fuck off."
"No, really."
"No, it's not guilt. It's bitterness that the world is such shit."
"Who has a narrator now, huh?" She stared out the window. He had stopped pacing and stood across the room. "I just thought you might, that's all. Seemed like a nice idea, so I thought if you did..." he trailed off.
She didn't appear to hear him. "You have to be able to say you weren't a selfish sob with it."
"So you just resign yourself to being miserable and anxiously watch the world go to pot? Seeing every fucked up bit? Focusing on it?"
She leaned out the window, blowing smoke rings. He tone remained flat. "No. You just have to not get too involved." She reached behind her for the shelf, and another cigarette, still not looking at him. "So don't go looking to me for answers, christ."

summer, i swear, still clings to my skin in that barley tangible way of a spider web you accidentally pull your arm through walking through the woods on a dark night or an unexpected stranger's hand on your back on a crowded street, just to get by.
underneath, in my muscles and organs, the churning tells me the next thing is already underway, being processed, plotted, prepared -
in that limited way we can, only imagining we can peek around the corner or over the horizon.
i try not to hold my breath because it is it's own kind of release, even when you're caught up in things.
transitions are really at issue: how to escort a recalcitrant self towards another feast of uncertainty and effort.

After some six and a half years (can it really be?), I'll be again pulling up roots and hauling off to call a new place home. After a life time of moving every year or two, the stability of this place has been dear, so much so that leaving it behind is my biggest moving anxiety.

Come August, my commuting days are over and I'll see you at the beach.

I feel like a creature
one from some time before now
where things like drawing rooms would have existed
where I could claim a delicate constitution
and ward off stares
when I spend two hours breaking my fast.

Too much depends on pacing.

That's all.
I'm not talking to any of you anymore. You can take your NIMBY, me-first, gentrifying, scare-tactic-buying, soulless selves and fold them into corners so sharp they can penetrate your ribs to prove that you literally have no heart. I'm nauseated by having to face the fact that the people in my province think cementing us as the national leader in child poverty and tripling the number people who don't have homes is something to be rewarded with another term in office and six-figure salary - proof positive that we haven't come past about age 10 as a society yet. We want to have our cake and eat it to, without ever facing the consequences. We shirk responsibility like it's math homework when we want to watch cartoons, denying the inevitable cycle of action and reaction. We are the ostrich with it's head so deeply in the sand we won't even blink when the lion creeps up behind us. We are guaranteeing our own demise, one term in office at a time, and seem intent on doing so until the gap between the rich and the poor is a chasm that swallows us all and there's no where to run to because every stream is an economic project, every building is privatized, and centuries of smog that our denial has yet to successfully dissipate suffocate us in our sleep.

My disappointment cannot be parted from my anger. Both sit in my throat like lava or embers, burning and choking.