FRIDAY, 31 DECEMBER, 1999, PHILADELPHIA

There are three hours left of this century. I have shirked a number of parties and events because I am suddenly overcome with an acute sense of mourning. I think some of my friends are annoyed with me for not wanting to trek out to the burbs to attend a house party, but there is something profoundly blasphemous about losing this century in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. It surpasses my already lenient sense of the absurd. It would be just too weird. Less than three hours left of the 20th century. There is not enough time to finish those books I meant to finish — to watch Gone With the Wind — there is no way to see New York or Washington again — what on earth can anyone accomplish in three hours, and I’ve left so much undone. If I sound like I am going to die in a minute and am mourning All Things Not Completed, I suppose in a way I am. Not that I’m dreading the 21st century. It will belong to me. I shall own it. And that’s fine, and as it should be. But the 20th c. has been my home and moving, next to death of loved ones, is the most traumatic thing for a person to go through, according to card-carrying experts. All literature and art hinges on each turn of the century. Fin de siècle is an artistic term, above all. And some pretty cool shit happened this time around. I’m glad to have lived in it, and I am saddened that it will all be over in a handful of minutes. So I may end up wandering the streets of Philly. I may end up weeping quietly into a solitary glass of champagne. Perhaps take a stab at the third page of the tongue-twisting Liszt Étude in Db minor. I may actually try to begin some project that I’ve been trying to get to for years now — just to slip in under the wire. But whatever I do tonight, it will not be enough. And that is vexatious. Where’s my mascara? It’s time to write bad poetry.