2011: The End of the Beginning

While the final days and hours of 2011 have been ticking down, I've been a bit too distracted to do much writing. Living in Barcelona will do that to you. I've enjoyed some interesting Christmas nights in my time, but none before this left me wandering home at five in the morning blissfully drunk on a steady stream of cider, wine, jaegermeister, whisky and rum, consumed in that order. The fact that I woke the next day not disgustingly sick from all the drink might have constituted a Christmas miracle, were I not a godless heathen. As it stands I’ll credit the miracle of a hangover free Boxing Day to the Philharmonic Pub’s incredible steak pie, and the lovely “pica pica” spread put out by the friends who invited two lonely expats to spend the holiday with them. This was a very different Christmas, but a fantastic one all the same.

So my apologies to the few but faithful for being less than prolific over the last few weeks, but I’m not going to lie to you. Being a lazy, shiftless bum for days on end was just what the doctor ordered. Still, to the loyal readers back home in the New World, the locals here in Spain, and that lone reader in Germany who checks in diligently every week or so, I promise to up the output in 2012, and to end delays like this recent one. However this is a promise I will more than likely break on multiple occasions, so in advance, lo siento.

One year ago tonight, I was at The Rhino in Toronto, my local pub of ten years. My wife and I gathered with our friends, standing at the bar drinking, carousing, singing “Auld Lang Syne” as the clock struck midnight. Kisses all around, followed by the Scots tradition of calling your mum, which these days means infuriating and numerous failed attempts to get a signal and successfully place a call  while millions of people in town are trying to do the same. It was a familiar and lovely way to put one year in its grave and witness the first sparks of life in a new one. This particular year the sparks never stopped, they just grew hotter, before igniting a full on blaze across the planet.

This final year of the 21^st Century’s first decade had the feel of a video recap of the last ten years as spliced together by someone on a dangerous amount of psychotropic drugs. This has been a decade of perpetual war, terrorism either organic or manufactured, economic disasters, revolutions calling for democracy in the east while the very idea itself was hijacked by the bloated, sausage fingered corporate elites in the west. Change we could believe in dangled in front of us like a carrot on a stick, only to find the new boss was really no different from the old boss. We’ve spent the better part of ten years under the threat of imminent doom lurking around every corner, and 2011 served as the inevitable result of this constant feeling that we were all teetering on the edge of a cliff, desperate just to hang on and not fall to a bloody, bone shattering death. Who could blame us for wallowing in disillusion and apathy after being repeatedly battered with bombs, buzzwords, and boogie men?

The great thing about 2011 is that we stopped wallowing. We woke up.  

It took a while, but here at the end of the beginning a grand chunk of people on this pale blue dot -- including yours truly -- finally opened their eyes to the reality those in control have been forcing on us for far too long. It took crossing an ocean and watching the birth of a revolution here in my new home to rouse me from the comatose state in which I spent most of this century. I hope this new found sense of actually giving a fuck or two sticks around for a while, in all of us.

In 2011 we lifted the veil, and got a good look at the man behind the curtain. He’s an ugly, twisted fucker, not pleased to be exposed to the public, but he’s hardly waving the white flag either. The people in Tahrir Square are still being beaten and assaulted by SCAF; Austerity is still the order of the day across Europe. The line between terrorist and protestor has all but been obliterated. It is going to get worse before there’s a chance of it getting any better. Tonight though, on New Year’s Eve, forget it all for a few hours. Go out, get pissed, and say goodbye to a bizarre, fantastic year.

Tonight I’ll be saying goodbye to 2011 in a new city, in my new local pub, The Philharmonic. My wife and I will raise a glass with new friends here; Catalans, Spaniards, and expats all among them. We’ll think of our friends and family back home, and across the globe, and no doubt share a fair amount of kisses while singing Auld Lang Syne.

It will be a familiar and completely new experience, all at once.

Happy New Year.