The New Year is an artificial construction, relating to no identifiable celestial phenomenon, and it doesn't bear much meaning for me. I only observe holidays based on celestial phenomena. For example, Christmas commemorates the appearance of a large comet in the skies around two millennia ago, with some associated quasi-supernatural hoopla.

It would make much more sense to launch the new year on December 21, the shortest daylight interval for those of us dwelling in the northern hemisphere. Without performing any research at all, I'm going to guess that this sensible idea was scrubbed as too pagan by church authorities who created our calendar. Those filthy nature-worshippers had to be put in their place, so the church effectively co-opted all their best rituals (Christmas, Easter) and squished the ones that actually made some sense. How far we've come: hundreds of years later, we're still hurling heavy objects at other people based on the pathetic details of their personal systems of superstitions.

Susan and I went over to Barbara and Jim's house for a low-key celebration. John and Sarah from next door went as well, along with a friend of Jim & Barbara's that we don't know so very well. Sometimes I get a dubious vibe off her because she knew them long before we did and I guess she thinks we're poaching on her pals. I guess we are, sort of.

I'd been complaining recently about how easy it is to get into a pattern of talking to everyone about the cumbersome and oft-pointless cares of the world, so we'd designed a game to force people to reveal personal stories and information. I was proud of this game, although it represented an artificial and momentary patch for a problem I often experience in my contacts with people I care about. The problem is that I'm not very good at the synchronized, parallel disclosure of information that marks the evolution of normal friendly relations. When someone asks how work is going, I'm supposed to tell them it's fine (or hellish), and tell a little story to reinforce this assessment, and then return the favor by asking in turn how the other person's work is going. But what I really want to say is "Who cares?" and skip the story, and not bother asking about the other person's job, because who cares about that either? and ask them what they're most scared of in the whole world, because that seems far more interesting than anything else that we're likely to talk about.

It's not that I dislike my job, or that I think it's demeaning to talk about work, or the trials of home-ownership, or politics, or all the other things with which we cement our bonds. It's just that we so seldom get on to the really juicy stuff. I don't even think to propose that I'm unusual in this regard. I tend to believe everyone else is experiencing the same awareness of missed potential, but something just keeps us from interrupting the flow of social discourse. So when we start into one of those conversations what happens is neither the normative scenario nor my ideal one. Instead we suffer through some sort of hybrid conversation in which I kind of halfassedly answer the question with some tiresome line about my clients, then forget to lob the question back to my partner, and instead ask about something completely unrelated. I am a terrible conversational partner. I'm almost always unhappy about the fact that I'm not asking what I'm really thinking, and I think most people detect my displeasure and interpret it as a desire to exit the conversation. By the end of the evening I'm often restless and regretful, suffering from the conversational equivalent of blue balls.

So the game posed various questions about one's hidden history and beliefs. After each question, everyone had to guess the responses of two other people. The underlying idea was that it might serve as a demonstration of how little we actually know about the inner lives of those around us. I suppose it was successful in that regard, but in few cases did we tell our hidden stories with quite the relish that I'd hoped to unleash. Who knows why. Maybe I'm wrong about what's really interesting to most people.

At the appointed hour we turned on a tiny black & white TV long enough to see a glowing ball descend on to an advertisement for a credit card, then went out on the porch to hear any ruckus the neighborhood might kick up. It was pretty subdued. We went home some time before three, but I had a hard time staying asleep. I heard the newspaper hit the doorstep and thought idly of getting up in the dark hours to read it. In the early light the calm of everything sleeping seemed to hold a certain promise.

Out on the Potomac River, ice is forming against the banks, in the quiet spots and on the eddy-sides of submerged rocks. When the wind kicks up little waves form, alternately sloshing over the thin ice sheets and rapping against the undersides. It sounds like you're on a boat at sea. Once in a while there is a muffled crack as a piece shears loose and joins the current, or the metallic grind of two sheets rubbing together. In the shallows, in the three-inch space beneath a tree limb and the mud bottom, I see a clutch of minnows oriented like iron filings in the freezing currents. I wonder if they feel any discomfort in the frigid water or if everything seems about the same when you're exothermic.