Year of the Hangover

I haven't seen the movie Kids since college when it was first released. Still haven't seent it since, but I remember the last line of the film. It's always resonated with me.

After the scenes of skateboarding teens, of awkward latchkey survival, of late-night hideaways and social explorations, of drunken drug-crazed basements of iniquity, of lonely boys wailing in bathtubs and perky girls squealing like adults, of cock-slappingly snuff-induced violations of AIDS-infested statutory pedophilic fun, our infected adolescent serial cherry-popping antihero shakes his hazy head on the morning after and mutters:

"Jesus Christ, what happened?"

Welcome to 2009.
After last year's self-aggrandizing vacation, the wheel of fortune hath spun another turn and now demands remittance. This isn't to say that progress hasn't been made or joy not achieved, but in light of last year the price has increased exponentially.
2009 has become the Year of the Hangover.
Not literally.
But you know the feeling.
I won't bore you with specifics or mealy-mouthed self-pity, but it's kinda, sorta like this:
As you set to scale a prodigious rock formation, you dream of the challenge, the bite of stone cutting your ankles and the numb callus that will soon become your hands, all made with gusto just to claim the jutting apex of the mountain for yourself, the champion taste of mineral saline ringing your lips and searing the scrapes on exposed skin when, without warning, the elevated climb cuts short, abrupt and violently placid, s,ooth and expansive, planar and monotonous, your marathon-stride muscles downshift unexpectedly to victory lap as you crawl upon the top of the plateau, its still oxygen-rich air filling your lungs with crestfallen awe as you stare at the towering peaks around you, proud and respectable, iconic and taunting, still a distant desire, leaving you behind on this plateau, this stable and routine plateau, its tabletop stretching on an on into an unrugged, dependable, predictable, no-nonsense, self-maintained, milquetoast flatline.

Perhaps this is a good thing.
It certainly isn't bad.
But I want MOAR.
The sky's the limit.
But the road stopped rising to meet me.
And I grow weary of waiting.
Ow, my fucking head hurts.

I had a year like this in high school: 1994. Many bittersweet memories. Had lost some weight and took the only school picture I've ever been proud of. But my grades were the worst that year. Got chosen for my first mainstage play, but I had no lines and died in the first scene. My grandmother died that year to bone cancer and her brother, my great-uncle, died months later. Both were fixtures in my childhood. Threw off everything I knew about myself. I remember drawing labyrinthine sketches with signs for the next year above every way out.

So, on the plus side, I'm so geared up for 2010. It's gonna be a year of opportunity.

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Now playing: Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right