Hello, Goodbye: Happy New Year!

A link to the Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBZ8ulc5NTg

Well, we’ve finally seen the back of 2011. Good riddance, I say! Echoing Dickens’ Christmas Carol, “It comes from other regions…conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men…” another, better blogger wrote here on Open Salon, “2011 sucked the big one.”

“W” and I went to Central Market last night to eat dinner and hear Cienfuegos, a band that specializes in Cuban son. (Yes, some of the supermarkets here in Austin present live music.) We didn’t stay for the whole program, but got to hear “Qui Sas,” “El Borracho,” and “El Carretero,” made famous by Ibrahim Ferrer of the Buena Vista Social Club. Some toddlers danced in front of the band. Their enjoyment was lovely, innocent and honest. Eventually a few adult couples couldn’t resist the salsa siren song and bravely joined in.

It was fairly nice, a light breeze, in the mid 50’s, and a half moon and evening star decorated the dark cloudless sky. “W” drove the Jeep downtown and we walked over to Auditorium Shores to “ANY” (Austin New Year). Hundreds of families, children, and dogs were there to welcome 2012. A DJ was spinning at one location, but we walked over to where another live band, Vitera, was jamming. Across the river, the Spring condos, Silicon Labs, and Frost Bank buildings provided a colorful backdrop. Many children were playing with “Starseeds,” a gizmo I’d never seen before. A battery-powered, lighted, shuttlecock at the end of an elastic band, they shot 20 or so feet into the sky, then rained down like balls of rainbows. It was stunningly beautiful. 

We came home early. A few fireworks scattered here and there. “W” succumbed to sleep, but I stayed up just to midnight. I wanted to make sure 2011 went down and didn’t return to haunt us all like some Frankinyear.

Today I wonder about time, how if it’s like a river, we never stick our toes in the same current twice. The ancient Mesopotamians built their ziggurats, the pharaoh’s great pyramid intended to be his tomb forever – the sarcophagi now all empty – even Julius Caesar at the Forum before he was stabbed, all never imagined their empires would not last forever. Free beer may be promised tomorrow, but we must live in the eternal now. And, as the immortal Martha Stewart promises, “That’s a GOOD thing!”

Steve Miller sings, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, into the future…” (link below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8MTP0TOFsM