Peace to the old man sipping drinks at the VFW bar.
And the bagpiper on the condo roof.
Peace to the newsman, chasing stories for cartoons.
Peace to the lady who jammed in Tunisia.
And peace to the one who makes really sexy ladies’ underthings.
The year is ending. Another revolution around the sun. Another slow arc of the top that never seems to unwind. Another winter night of wine and friends and winter morning of headaches and shame about how tubby Christmas made you.
It’s a time to say goodbye to the people and places of the past three-six-five. For me that means a fare thee well to those I wrote about here in these …
These, what?
These pages? Don’t make me laugh. A short at a server somewhere in the world and these lines never happened. No library for one to stumble across a dusty old book they come to love. No song that gets caught in their ear or crumbling monument they sit upon on a picnic day.
My Chicago, vanished. My legacy the momentary darkening of some pixels on your screen and the lightening of others.
So I say goodbye to the people I met, the places I wandered, the things I saw. The drum circle at 63rd. The dancers on a South Shore roof. A woman handing out dreams on the #66 bus.
I say peace and farewell to the makers of one final canoe, to the hobbled pigeons, trainee barbers and shot girls dancing in inappropriate places.
Peace to the scientists in rooms of insects. Peace to the cackling homeless man on the bridge, the screaming one on the train and to the peaceful, loving one I don’t see in my neighborhood anymore, which is starting to make me worried.
Peace to family, friends and unicycle salesmen.
I wish peace to the seasons, to the homeless man pushed through an ugly spring rain.
To the smoke and sweat of a summer-clogged night.
To the little girl laughing as the bubbles float to the street in an endless warm fall.
And peace to the communists holding court in the snow.
Peace to you, 2013. To the men and women and inanimate objects I fell in love with just enough to write about on a site one power surge from oblivion.
Peace and goodbye.
And to you, 2014, and to all the people, places, objects and hilarious shitheads I will meet in the next three-six-five, I say hello.
Peace and hello.
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