Resolutions for 2012: A Time to Dream a Time to Hope, Only for Some

The stuff dreams/resolutions are made of.

Well, 2011 your "Best and Worst" films, books, mistakes, political gafs, science advances, medical blunders, sports events, blowbacks, tech trends, celebrities/people have vanished into the land of forgetfulness.  Ended are the celebrations and drunkenness and substance induced oblivions and enthusiasms that blottoed the dread of work on Tuesday (if you are lucky) or NO JOB (much worse if no one is there to subsidize you) on Tuesday. And the whip lashing marathon bouts of excess erupting like cheap wine from bottles of New Year's Eve wildness and crescendoing into the morning dawn, then devolving into the drag of New Year's Day bloat and torpor, when quietude and TV voyeurism reel in the mind...they, too, have fled.


There's nothing left but hangovers stemmed with tomato juice and water, and resolutions. Resolutions:  to get a better job, to get a job, to pump up one's career, to make a ton of money, to invest more wisely, to become buffer,  to lose weight, to get a nose job-tummy tuck-face lift, to "get a husband," to lose a shrike of a wife, to dump the mistress, to get a sugar daddy, to become a porn star, to greenlight a screenplay-play-project-novel-ebook, to locate angel investors, to Kickstart a project, to land a great lit agent, to dump a hack of a lit agent, and to revenge oneself on an arrogant SOB who has IGNORED/PREVENTED one from "making it," whatever "making it" might be...in the arts, in tech, in pharma patents, etc. The impossible resolutions are endless and silly. For what do they matter? Once achieved, it's never enough. Unrealized, the soul damage is torment beating failure, incompetence, hypocrisy. But truly we all know that the results matter not, for it's all in the dreaming.

Are the dreamers the lucky ones? However, stupid, self-absorbed, solipsistic, self-satisfied, and supercilious the inspired may be, he or she imagines another realm of possibility out there, a redefinition of self, a new worthiness and integrity that will please and satisfy, regardless of how petty and mundane.

But not all have the "luck," "good fortune" or the random middle class birthright to dream. For others there are no dreams, there is little hope. For others these uplifts have been slowly drained like malnourishment depletion, siphoned by emotional privation or physical deprivation or illness. For these of the waning hope, it is merely a daunting struggle to go TO THE NEXT MINUTE. Does it matter the reason? Whatever the reason: illness, old age, homelessness, starvation, poverty, abysmal depression, insanity, the light is dimming, the memories of joy are irreconcilable with reality's horrors.

The elite with the power and wealth of the world but riddled with incurable disease or greed's emotional self-tyranny - the beggar, or the child of the bloated starved belly, or the raped, maimed and battered of war torn lands, these, after all, are faces on the same coin of mortality. These cannot hope or dream of pleasant possibilities. They dare not.

The dying elite look to withhold the future time, unless they can completely control it, but their wealth cannot and they cannot. They can only speed death through suicide, an uncertain realm, at best. Beloved stasis is never guaranteed in their mortal kingdom. For the elite have never known a true peace. There has been the ever present, nagging danger of overthrow and thwarting, attacking enemies, clever back-stabbing competitors. And now at the maw of death, for the elite have been selfish, evil and hateful toward others in the support of a system of extreme inequities, regardless of purported "good works,"what peace can be achieved with death? The oblivion of nothingness?

Likewise, the starving dares not dream. For what is a dream of a bowl of rice? Subsistence - eat to starve another day, and the next and next. With subsistence, one is forced to suffer attenuation, endure the next shuddering hunger pang, abide in its aching increase and agony, unending, until thoughts scream for surcease through death, the comforter. And then the realization that comes to the dying elite comes to the starving: what is after? More torment? The oblivion of nothingness?

Likewise the raped, the maimed of war torn lands. What is the dream of revenge and justice? The deed was done; the innocence will never return; the maimed will never be whole. There is no way to make the one responsible pay, for who was the one responsible? Governments? Hatred and revenge devour the hater until death is desired, the death of the abuser which boomerangs back on the death wisher. Such wishes destroy the little life left and create a living oblivion.

So the ill and insane, suffering and comatose, the dying elite and the starving impoverished, the victims of war, are a mountain of pure, existential reality, dreamless landscapes. For them dreams bring more pain then fanciful flight is worth. Better to have no hope. Better to have no dreams. Dreams are the felt unreality. The horrible untruth. They must just focus on getting through the next minute.

And for those who have made resolutions and who dream dreams? By the end of the year the dream will grow less bright if not realized or brighter if progress is being made. The result doesn't matter. The process does. It brings one to the next glorious moment when another inspiration takes hold and another and another. That is the fun of it, the spinning of gossamers that may never happen, but spin and spin and whirl. And be grateful you have made it thus far, remembering a time will come when it will be wise not to spin, not to dream. The pain will be too great.