Measure for Measure

by Anne M Carley

We're coming up on the Brave New Number, surrounded by encouragement to make this New Year's Eve a big deal. I fear, however, Millennium Fatigue has already set in. We measure so many things, in so many ways, you'd think there could be some glaringly obvious metric we could use, to encapsulate the turn of the year, and the mighty changes in store for the next.

What mighty changes, though? Hearts will still beat their rhythms. Bankers will still count their money. Singers will still aim higher and lower than they did the day before. Children will still chant their counting-out rhymes until one of them is IT.

I'm told some religious types ache for the Millennium to arrive, believing that with it will come the Apocalypse. Weary of the everyday moral difficulties in their lives, they yearn for a force so strong, so overwhelming, that they must surrender to it. They will be helpless against this superior power, joyous that it has arrived from outside our scope of understanding to bring judgment.

If that does not happen, and most of us are still here the next day, doing mostly what we did the day before, is there something still to be done, to observe our shift into triple-aught?

Measure this,

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measure that...

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Figure out how much to use.

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Is this enough?

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Will that be too much?

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OK, but how "moderato," exactly?

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This is a very sensitive instrument

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Billie Holiday had a range slightly over one octave

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How much again?

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Did you allow enough time?

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What are you doing News Year's Eve?

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Will you be dieting New Year's Day?

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Might need to get a new prescription

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 Maybe a notch or two to let out...

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Time for some silence now.

 

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Lighting all those spare candles, drinking your stockpiled bottled water with abandon, the central heating still functional, maybe the thing to do this New Year's Day is to set aside some peace and quiet in which to pause, reflect, consider, and celebrate life, in its immeasurable messiness.

 

About the Perpetrator:

Anne M Carley edits the Newsletter. In her spare time she puts her feet up and faces away from the clock.