From 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines 

he wrote a poem

and he called it "chops"

because that was the name of his dog
and that's what it was all about
his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
and his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts

that was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
and he let them sing on the bus
and his little sister was born
with tiny nails and no hair 

and his mother and father kissed a lot
and the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
and his father always tucked him in bed at night
and was always there to do it

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
and that's what it was all about
and his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of the new paint
and the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
and left butts on the pews
and sometime they would burn holes
that was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
and the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
and the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
and his father never tucked him in bed at night
and his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it 

Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
and he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
and that's what it was all about
and his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
that was the year Father Tracy died
and he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
and he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
and his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
and the girl around the corner
wore too much make up
that made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because it was the thing to do
and at 3 am he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly

That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
and he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
because that's what it was really all about
and he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
and he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen

Notes on Surviving a College Party

This is a piece for those who consider themselves socially awkward and behaviorally inept. If you have had a sexual encounter (with a real person who is not yourself) in the last 72 hours, this piece is not for you, you sexy beast. Rest of you, read on. 

Less socially evolved beings (such as yourself) may often find yourself at a loss when it comes to behaving in a culturally accepted manner at a gathering of alcohol, drugs and dance music, or more usually known in its layman term, a "party". More often than not, that problem would not exist as you simply might not be popular enough to be invited. If so, rejoice and go back to playing Call of Duty 3; your ability to act like a well-adjusted young adult will not be tested today. If you do somehow manage to wrangle an invitation for yourself, however, you are in luck, for how often does one get such eloquently written advice from a fraternity-veteran? Slap yourself on the back for finding such a gem. 

If you have slapped yourself on the back, congratulations, you have just reaffirmed your status as an awkward-being, if you had any doubts before. No worries, embarrassing actions like that will be eradicated by the time you attend your first college party. 

Timing is everything in a party. Even if your invite (which I doubt you have one, but let's just pretend) says that the party starts at 8, please don't be on time. The sober monitors (bouncers) for one, are super alert at that time and your chances of crashing a party are extremely slim. Show up between 10:30pm to 11pm. 

Parties are usually regulated in one of four ways: friend-only, invite-lists, buy-ins or open. Friend-only parties are smaller and only very close friends know about it, they may even be strictly restricted to fraternity brothers only. These are near impossible to crash, unless you're the girlfriend or dying cousin of a member. Bigger parties are based on invite-lists, which may or may not be strictly monitored, and you can sometimes get in if you just know someone on the list. If you do not have an invite, stick with a group that's going in at once -- once your hand's been marked, you're home free. Buy-ins are easy to get into (but they may be invite-based too), all you really have to do is to fork up around $5 for a beer cup. Parties with buy-ins are usually equipped with kegs, but those are bigger security risks with the cops. Due to legalities, parties that serve beer by the cans (as mine does) makes it harder for cops to bust the entire house for under-aged drinking. Do not bring a backpack to a party; you will not be allowed to carry it in. Parties at fraternity houses are rarely open to just anyone because thieves and homeless people exist. And if they are, you really don't want to find yourself there anyways. Have some basic sense of decency, geez.

Now you're in the party! You should be greeted by a wave of incredibly loud music, the stench of stale beer, and strobe lights. As you are socially-awkward and all, being thisclose to 250 people at once can be overwhelming. It doesn't make it better that they all seem to be dancing (and grinding, but we'll talk about that later) to different beats, none of which coincide with the whomp-whomping coming from the speakers. Your best course of action now is to locate the alcohol. The better parties plan and allocate enough beer, but the roughly planned ones may run out, so grab some cans and be selfish about it. You are now to stand by the wall and look cool, which involves taking long drags of whatever drink you have and rolling your eyes at everyone. The idea is to convey the message that you're only here because you're obligated to make appearances at big parties, and that everyone's acting like total drunk tools and you're better than them. This image may be subsequently dropped when you're eventually shitfaced. Also, locate all of the bathrooms, you will thank me later. 

 

You may or may not occasionally stumble into a conversation with a stranger at the party. If they're attractive, introduce yourself (omit your favorite LOTR characters in your self-introduction), ask about their major. Socially acceptable things to talk about includes where they're from, what they're drinking, who they know at the party... If you're crashing the party, however, omit that last question as it will only lead to your outing as a 'rando'. If they're hideous, keep saying "WHAT? THIS MUSIC IS SO LOUD! PARTY ON!" and bop your head and move along. You didn't come to a party to hook up with uglies, and any minute spent with one is a minute wasted on opportune hunting.

Games of beer-pong, baseball, flip-cup or smash would be occurring in the most crowded areas of the room. You would recognize it by the raucous laughter of college kids flinging ping-pong balls into triangularly arranged cups. Games of pong and baseball are difficult to get into without friends at the party, so I recommend avoiding it. Flip-cup, however, is largely communal and it would not be difficult to squeeze in. Two rows of party-goers form across two sides of a rectangular table, each with a bit of beer in their cup. When it gets to your turn, toss back the beer, place the cup on the edge of the table, and flip it with an upward motion so that it lands on its mouth. Simple. A lot of cheering and high-fiving goes on if your team wins, so I would avoid that if you're not into touching strangers in an exuberant manner. 

At some point in the night you may find yourself wanting to dance. The dance-floor, however, is not an all-inclusive space and you may want to reconsider. Dancing is neither required nor encouraged on the dance-floor, and the only movements you need to be capable of replicating are that of a pulsating pelvis. The dance-floor is a cruel mother, it can give so much and it can crush. Your best bet for avoiding elimination is to find someone intoxicated enough to grind with. If you look around you and everyone else has been paired up into teams of public affection, quietly and inconspicuously slink away, for you have been disqualified, you shameful rat. Don't be disheartened, however. If you are heterosexual, its very virtue guarantees a good chance for a grinding-partner regardless of how ugly one is, I have witnessed this phenomenon many times.

One in the morning is a good time to leave a party. Stay too long and things inevitably happen. The bathrooms start getting clogged up with puke, lesser beings start revealing just how susceptible to alcohol-poisoning they are, and sometimes things go missing. You wouldn't want to stick around when they start accusing people of stealing the DJ's iPod, especially if you were the one who stole it. Being the only one sobering up when everyone else is hammered can be both an eye-opening and terrifying experience. 

Do your best to avoid wobbling when walking home, and for the love of God, check that you don't have a beer on you when you leave. Carrying around a bright-red plastic cup gives cops the probable cause to stop you. They are abundant as chickens in a barnyard so don't give them a reason to book you. 

Congratulations! You have survived your very first party and hopefully made enough friends to get invited to another. Now go home and nurse that hangover (hydrate, hydrate, hydrate) and you'll have a whole week's worth of stories to impress your nerdier friends. 

You're very welcome.

Worse Off

"Stop complaining, a lot of people have it worse than you do." 

"Finish your food, there are starving children in Africa." 

"Enough whining about the condom's quality, homeless people have to use discarded candy wrappers!" 

... and so forth are some examples of admonitions one might receive when voicing one's unhappiness about a given situation. People who say stuff like these work on the principle that as someone out there is definitely worse off than you are, you should feel silly about your own trivial-seeming mosquito-bites-of-a-problem and just suck it up.

I reject this logic as a) the existence of hypothetical worse-off starving/cold/uneducated/ugly people out there in the world has no bearing on my own quality of life, b) problems that exist for different people in different realms of individual contexts are not comparable and c) feeling good about your own situation because someone else suffers more is generally considered sadism. 

Somewhere out there, children are starving to death by the minute. Knowledge about that has no affect on the way each of our lives pan out. Do they become less hungry if I finish everything on my plate? My life in no way affect theirs and theirs in no way affect mine. We essentially live in entirely different worlds and feeling better or worse about anyone else's problems when you compare them against your own is silly.

People who tell us to feel better because someone else has it worse are primarily lazy individuals who do not care enough to come up with actual consolations. They promote complacency, in that your relationship problems, for example, are tolerable as compared to some poor starving child in a ditch in a third-world communist country (and he doesn't even have the luxury of drowning his problems away in vodka as you do!), ergo, you should just sit back and relish in that thought. Would humankind as a species ever get anywhere if we managed to find satisfaction in our petty problems? Looking upwards and forwards is what gets us places. 

I don't want to trivialize anyone's suffering, and the point I'm making is that everyone has problems, and the only way to truly get perspective is to actually be there. 

Crime and Punishment

My parents have always been trying to instill in me the virtues of honesty. But deceit comes so naturally to me, and has always felt like an integral part of my life. Lying makes everyone happier, because the truth is for selfish people who haven't the compassion in them to care about how damaging it is to the people you love. I lied constantly, faked grades, cheated, at times counterfeited entire report cards using the special watermarked paper that my schools actually printed report cards off of, just to escape the disapproving sigh that accompanies another bad grade. (I even had the principal's signature scanned from a different document then superimposed on my own version- it was pretty amazing.) I've always had a talent with graphic manipulation, and like geniuses who turned to lives of crime, my untethered passions took me towards the path of unrelenting deceit and a habit of taking the easy way out.

Of course, most times I didn't get away with it, and pay with blood I did. I don't know how other kids got punished, and I suppose most Chinese families hit their children when they misbehaved. Being whipped (actually belted is a more accurate and efficient usage of word; it conveys both the action and weapon in question) by my father was a memorable fixture of my childhood. I'd be thrown on the linoleum floor while leather connected with skin in bursts of cracks, each one leaving an inch-thick welt that requires two days to subside. (Bathing in cold water afterwards was preferable as hot water just made it sting like crazy.) A ten-year old me cried in very loud raspy sobs while strangely entranced by the gray accents that raced throughout the white floors. It was like everything else in the world was too fuzzy and horrible to pay attention to, so my mind chose this mundane pattern to focus on. 

"If we didn't hit you, who knows what you'd become." 

Maybe I wouldn't have any of the shivery, cold-sweat inducing bouts of panic I used to get when waiting for my dad to return from work. Teachers used to always ring up my mother when I've been a smart-ass in class, and mother would call up my dad, and I'd have the rest of the day till 6 to worry about it. I've been sent out of class more than any decent student should, and probably spent more than half my Chinese lessons either standing at my desk or outside. The camaraderie forged with your fellow insubordinate classmates while outside the classroom is fleeting. They'd sell you out in a heartbeat for a chance to get back inside. I wondered if teachers would be that quick to call if they knew the treatment waiting for me at home, but I'd much rather endure physical pain than the humiliation of begging for mercy from any of those minimal-wage losers in dead-end jobs teaching primary level.

Bleeding from a belt-induced wound is uncommon. Usually, angry red welts that raise about a centimeter off your skin forms in criss-crossing patterns but that is, of course, entirely dependent on the way you got struck. Bleeding usually occurs only when the metallic parts of the belt breaks your skin, but as my parents weren't striking to kill, that only happened occasionally when they completely lose it in a fit of rage and fury. Sometimes I wondered if neighbors could hear me screaming, so I screamed louder. But no one ever did anything about it, so I screamed louder still. I suppose we have this way about us in apartment buildings that no one is ever going to admit to hearing anything undesirable. Sometimes I can hear other kids in the building, or in the next building, yelling and crying as they got hit, so I suppose someone heard me too. 

I suppose the thing that made me saddest wasn't being hit. Even when friends asked me at school about the zebra-like markings, I didn't feel embarrassed or anything, but instead was strangely proud that I've got scars that signified something. Maybe survival. No, I was saddest when my older sister would yell that my beatings and my crying was too noisy for her to study, and she'd rather go sit outside on the steps with her assigned reading. Then again, I didn't do anything when our dad broke her bedroom door's lock with a hammer to get at her for one thing or the other, so it's not as if I have any sibling-loyalty points to reclaim.

It brings me to the question of hereditary patterns. Parents who hit had parents who hit, who in turn had parents who hit. I personally don't believe in inflicting that much pain in a being that I brought into the world. Besides, I remember what I felt towards them after each beating, and I never want my child to feel that kind of betrayal, animosity and distrust towards me. I admit I was a nasty little shit for creating my web of lies, but getting hit never really fixed anything, I just learned to hide it better. 

I don't harbor any lingering hate for my parents, of course; I love them very much. But their mentality and methods are truly incompatible with me, which was one of the main reasons I had to get away from that house that badly.

Whitney

The Corporal form of Whitney Houston died today, but for me, the Singer Whitney passed a long time ago. The downfall of one of the greatest voices the world has ever heard was deeply painful to witness. I truly hope that the world's memory of her would be primarily of the heights she once soared, and not simply a cautionary tale of how drugs can ruin you.

Here are my favorite performances of the legendary voice:

Tao (NYC Day 5)

In true to SATC-form, the destination for my last dinner in New York was Tao. For SATC fans, this was the place Samantha brought her lesbian-phase girlfriend to meet the rest of the girls, and there was a giant Buddha statue by their table. Reservations were made, and I, along with a Parisian traveler also touring NY, made my way to Tao at 10pm. It's just the kinda place that's so swanky you only have dinner in the dead of the night.

Everything's very Asian-fusion, as their theme describes it. I don't know why 'fusion' was used, maybe because it happens to rhyme with 'Asian'. A lot of restaurants like describing their styles as so but what are they fusing it with? That part wasn't made explicitly clear to me. Is it a way to dodge questions about whether their chef's really Asian, or to charge exorbitant prices? "We don't need real Asian chefs, that's the whole point of fusion, come on! Keep up with the times already." It's very loud like the inside of a club, the lights are dim and decorations are mainly black and red. Perhaps they meant Asia fused with sex dungeon?

My new pal for dinner doesn't speak much English and I don't speak much French, but we meet each other halfway with a inter-spiced dialogue of both languages and somehow manage to understand each other. I, for one, was delighted to be able to put phrases we learnt in class to practical use, such as "what looks good on the menu", and "you have a real job so you're paying for my $40 filet mignon." So thankful I paid attention when they were doing the chapter on "10 everyday phrases for ripping strangers off".

We were seated about 5 meters away from the table they used in Sex and the City, and I was facing Giant Buddha directly. It was a moment of pure reverie as I breathed in the essence of opulent, over-priced fake Asian food. The oddly shaped menus were dizzying to my already intoxicated brain, and I settled on the shabu shabu steak with wasabi. "Shabu shabu", as explained by my attentive waitress, meant that I had to cook the thinly sliced filet mignon in a hot-pot at my own table. I wondered if there was a DIY style for drinks too, where they can just bring me a bottle of vodka and let me mix my own creations. The wasabi was an inspired addition to the flavor of the beyond tender meat. Quite honestly one of the best meals I've had in my life. 

Taking a break from my peach cosmo (peach schnapps instead of triple sec and peach juice instead of cranberry), I rested my inebriated head on the seat-back and looked up. There was a giant scroll of Chinese calligraphy decorating the ceiling, and realized that the Chinese name for Tao was "道". I explained to my Frenchie the meaning behind this restaurant's name, partly to snub him for only knowing one and a half languages. He, however, wasn't really interested or impressed and was apparently also fluent in Italian. Damn it. I was going to have to look for different ways to demean the guy paying for my dinner.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I stumbled out of Tao with my belly filled with cosmos and steak, feeling very much satisfied. I, however, am not the kind of person who crosses things off their 'to-do' list and be done with it. I don't want to check things off and never do them again; once I discover something I want to repeat it over and over until I hate it and ruin it for myself. (Precisely why I can't enjoy rum chocolate and casual sex anymore.) Some people go, "Oh that was delightful, now I can say I've been here." No, I want to come here so often they replace Buddha with my statue.

Returning to Madison after all this excitement sure is a drag. I'm very glad I was impulsive enough to get myself to New York for a fantastic holiday trip within such short notice. I feel so much at home in NY that leaving seems crazy. Where am I going? I'm already where I have to be. 

A Phantomy Christmas (NYC Day 4)

Ah, Christmas in New York. It's a magical, exciting idea, to stroll down Fifth Avenue and let myself be dazzled by the drippy lights of Fendi, or have a latte on the steps of St Patrick's Cathedral. (I generally don't visit grounds of worship for fear that I may be struck down before I'm allowed to step foot on holy ground, but this cathedral was so pretty that I had to risk it.) I just forgot that a million other tourists had the exact same idea.

"Sure, flock to New York and congest the streets with your strollers and puffy coats, why don cha?" I'd spit in the face of a baby if a parent's stunned reaction paralyzes them and allows me to sidestep them. Yeah I'm visiting too, but I'm not stopping every five feet to furiously snap photos at every last brick. You guys spent thousands to be here, so be here. What kind of vacation would it be if all you ever remembered was looking at it through a 3-inch screen? And for fuck's sake, your baby-stroller is a tripping hazard. They should invent strollers that levitate in the air like a balloon, and if it floats away, better view for the baby. 

I never knew the Rockefeller Tree was real, I always assumed they just put up a fake tree in Rockefeller Center every year. I guess I never looked too closely at the famous tree when it was on TV, 'cause honestly the word 'tree' paired with anything makes me sleepy, even if it's 'famous'. Unless it's 'tree-house', now that's a thrilling word, mostly because I never had one and have never been in one. No one owns trees in Singapore, building a tree-house would probably constitute as defacing government property. As a result, Freud would say I'm fixated. Tree-houses bring such a youthful, rebellious image to my mind, a place where little kids can be the man of their own house, away from their parents, and have kinky yet youthfully innocent explorations with the neighbor kid from down the street. Your mom'll then "drop by" and pretend that she's delivering cookies but really she just wants to check if you children are doing anything weird, because she's been young and knows what kids get up to the minute they're in a room by themselves, but since the tree-house is a fort, she'll have to ring a bell to have the step-ladder lowered, and by then all the evidence of any doctor-play have been stuffed behind pants and zippered up. 

I need to stop mourning the loss of my own childhood opportunities.

So there I am, packed in Rockefeller center with a thousand other people. It's a lot less idyllic than what Home Alone 2 made it out to be. You know it's unrealistic when Macaulay Cokehead Culkin's mom can find him by the Rockefeller Tree on Christmas day cause he's the only one there. In real life the kid would be lost among that crowd, probably 'till this day where he's 30, uneducated and scavenging on the streets of New York, occasionally receiving sexual favors from Pigeon Lady. I inch my way across the plaza and looked up at the monstrous tree. It's a lot fatter in person, I have to say. Very bottom heavy, pardon my insensitivity. 

My Christmas present to myself (there aren't many words sadder than these) was one ticket (oh, there we go) to the Christmas Day showing of 'Phantom of the Opera'. Like 'Chicago', I had previously seen the fantastic movie version and was thrilled to be able to see it performed live. I don't particularly like opera because it mysteriously manages to be both over-the-top yet boring at the same time.  'Phantom', however, was a classic that I enjoyed as a movie, and it must be amazing if its the longest ever running production on Broadway, ever. Still, at the back of my mind a little voice told me I should have went to see Daniel Radcliffe in 'How To Succeed' instead. I shall regret that to my dying day. 

I completely enjoyed 'Phantom', especially for the elaborate sets they deployed. 'Chicago' should take notes. These people sprung for actual flying chandeliers, dungeons with floating candles, magic disappearing acts and trick-floorboards - Chicago should be able to afford more than 5 chairs and 6 feather boas. When I watched the movie, I really rooted for Raoul, but for some reason I hated him in the play. Maybe because he's less attractive- I tend to do that sometimes. Have irrational bouts of anger towards uglies. Maybe because the play's version of the Phantom is a lot more sympathetic. I have always been drawn towards stories with an unhinged, stalker-ish love affair. Clear-headed people go crazy in love, but crazies in love just become more human. 

Grand Central Shenanigans (NYC Day 3)

I generally don't contain myself to militaristic itineraries when I'm on vacation. I find it utterly counter-productive if I have to restrict my enjoyment because I have to rush off to meet the requirements of the timetable. Fun can't be scheduled; the harder you try to pin and nail it down, the harder it evades you. My style is to simply follow where the path leads. See something interesting? Take a peek. Feel a little urge for a quick nap? Take an hour (or five) to rest. Whatever feels right.

My wanderings on my third day in New York brought me on the path towards the Empire State Building. I made a beeline for it, until I found my path blocked by a majestic looking terminal. "Grand Central", it says on the outside. "This is just one of those moments", I say to myself, quoting Barbra while simultaneously drawing eye-rolls from New Yorkers who have encountered way too many unhinged theatrical types to be bothered with my self-musings. As I walked pass the columns and into the terminal, entering the cavernous concourse, I at once knew that this, not the Empire State Building, was the true destination of my journeys today. (Also because I later on tried to find the ESB but got lost, but forget that for a moment and share in the beauty of the Grand Central Terminal with me for a while.)

I stood upon the stairway landing, directly facing the main hall of the train station. People were lining up for tickets, hurrying along to their respective platforms for boarding, stepping off trains and entering 42nd Street, all bustling and busy. Yet each one of them slowed down for a while in the concourse, and took just the slightest moment to soak in the astounding beauty of the exquisite designs. The ceiling, elaborately painted with astronomical patterns (curiously backwards); the arching windows, tall and grand, streaming in sunlight. 

A trip around some of the stores brought me to a shop dealing only in model train sets. A huge portion of the store was dedicated to a model set with no less than 6 or 7 trains running through it, with kids plastered to the side of the display, as if wanting to jump into this miniature world and live a day as train conductors. I'm sure they would rethink this, if only they knew that in the United States, a train accident occurs every 2 hours. Happy conducing a train that's derailing into fiery disasters! Children can be so silly. 

Trains do bring a certain romantic image to my mind. It's so classic, the way people traveled in vintage, black and white movies. The heroine's husband is returning home from the war, quick, darling, to the train station where he will see you first among thousands of other sex-starved housewives! Running from the mob because you're material witnesses to a crime? Hop on a train and be whisked away to certain cross-dressing adventures! (I can't not make a reference to 'Some Like It Hot', it is the single best movie that involved trains, trannys and Marilyn Monroe.) 

I left Grand Central Station on the other side of the building, feeling as if I, like the weary travelers stepping off their respective trains, had also made some sort of journey. It was a step through history, a walk through a crucially important destination that affected so many of America's pioneers. Barbra herself stepped through these pillars in 'The Prince of Tides'. I emerged from the terminal feeling pleased with myself, knowing that my destination-less plans worked out once again. 

Constellation

I don't need you to complete me, because I am not comprised of individual parts that can be removed and reassembled at will. I am a whole entity, an existing body that isn't missing any vital piece. You do not hold the final piece of the puzzle, for I am not a fragile, irregularly shaped hole without you.

I am a mass of stars that shines with its own intensity, I burn with my own incandescence and I am bright even without you. But I need you. I need you to point out the constellations within me, to show me what's beautiful in me, that which even I do not see. I need you to make sense of the mess that I can be, the mess that another would see, but no, not you. You make sense of the senseless and with your fingers, you trace beautiful patterns of warriors and heroes. You are not another star that completes me, you have to be more than that - you have to be the one that truly sees me.

My Hatred of New Year's Eve (A Loony-Cuckoo's Rant)

We place so much emphasis on celebrating those last few moments of a year. That last final day is so important, because this year will never come again. The past is behind us, let us look forward into this brand new year that we have yet to screw up! A fresh slate, finally, the stink of 2011 was getting unbearable to be around. 

But what makes the 31st of December that magical? If the Mayans had decided to finish the Calendar a day early, or to give February a few extra days (those stingy bastards), the New Year's would come a day later, or a day early. This essentially makes celebrating New Year's Eve completely arbitrary, because a calendar is based on the assumption that one can effectively quantify time. Time isn't a moving river, flowing on a linear scale, as people would have you believe. Clocks give us 24 hours in a day, and broken down into a second with every tick. But isn't the measure of a "second" really man-made? How can we define time as a ticking, moving entity when it has existed long before our planet has? Time isn't the thing that is passing, we are. Time doesn't exist in clocks or calenders, time exists in the growth of a child, in the wrinkles of a grandmother, in the changing leaves of a tree. We cannot celebrate the end of a cycle of "time", because it has never moved to begin with. As William Faulkner said, "Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stop does time come to life."

To me, the belief in the the flow of time is the same as believing in religion. The Bible and the clock, both handiwork of men, created to explain what we did not understand. You might argue that the existence of day and night time surely means that time has to be moving in order for there to be a difference in the amount of time we receive sunlight. But the difference between day and night, of course, is simply caused by the rotation of the Earth; once again, we are the ones that are moving - not time. The very fact that we can simply declare Daylight Saving Time, to casually shift an hour forward or backwards, shows us the fickleness and flimsy nature of "time". If time can truly be measured, like a length or a weight could, we wouldn't be able to just announce that we'd take an extra hour here and there. Time zones present another issue for the argument for time. Two people standing on opposite sides of the globe are speaking on the telephone. They are in the exact same moment, and the guy in China has arrived in the new year, but the guy in America is physically denied from entering it, just because he's standing somewhere else? It was, once again, arbitrarily decided that US follows Asia as far as time zones go, so if once upon a time we decided that US should lead, then Americans would enter the new year first. Of course, quantifying time is a very essential tool, it gives us a reference point as we plan our days. However, to base our whole lives around the concept that a new calendar year means anything is just silly.

But people do celebrate New Year's Eve, that's irrefutable. I believe they celebrate it because they need to. They need to believe that next year will be different, that all their promises to themselves will materialize and come to fruition through no effort of their own. They need to look forward after miserably screwing up everything they had in the previous years. People want to believe that this would be the year everything gets better, this will be the year they lose some weight, this will be the year they find true love, this year just has to be the year of all years. And then a year later, we're at another lame, noisy party, drunk. We're back where we started, making the same empty promises for our same empty lives.

Countdown! ... 4, 3, 2, 1 *Happy New Year!* And ... you're still a screw up. 

This isn't meant to discourage people from trying to make a change in their lives. All I'm saying is, it's pointless to wait till a completely random date that ancient civilizations came up with to do it. Every moment brings new opportunities and challenges, it is only human laziness and procrastination, dabbled with naive hope, that makes us believe in the magic of a New Year. Go out there and make that change, don't let some silly Mayans stop you.