So, it’s a new year.

The Kid is back on the Left Coast.

(I have a huge black dog who goes upstairs to check his room constantly, wondering when her boy is coming back.) Yesterday, his gang took a hike into the British Columbia mountain-forests. The day rained, then higher up it snowed, and the trees dripped with fog. They had no choice, he said, but to get across a waterfall in bare feet and soaking wet t-shirts. Gray and green and soft. He kept losing his words, remembering how lovely.

I know that sometimes you have to take off your shoes, get wet, to be closer to beautiful—even if it’s snowing.

In all the vastness of space, this world, this place is so gorgeous there are no words. We only get a little time here. I wander around now, wondering how the hell the ’80s can be over. I can’t believe Tina Turner got old and died. I want to know since when is Joe Montana not starting on Sunday. Bending to pick something off the floor is getting harder. Twilight now, so I’ll never play pro ball or learn how to dance.

Don’t try for words, I wanted to tell him. Speechless is right. Just put the memory in a safe place, so you can take it out and smell it when you need to. We always think we’ll go back to our best moments next summer, or when the kids grow up, or when we retire, and we somehow never do. Maybe that’s okay.

Maybe there’s magic in just once.

It’s also a world where we’re drone-bombing children and old people and taking sides like it’s the Super Bowl. The planet is beginning to smoke, but we elect screaming madmen who promise to get rid of the queers if we’ll only let them take everything we have left before they drive us off a cliff. We’ll sell oil until the oceans head for the upper atmosphere.

Artificial intelligence and automation mean we have never been richer. We live in humanity’s Golden Age, but instead of less work and more art, we are frantic and furious at the idea that faraway brown people might get to eat pizza and watch Netflix, too. Their granddads didn’t ride the Mayflower and kill savages by the trailer load and buffalo by the millions, goddammit. They don’t deserve it.

Computer mapping means we’ve learned that animals can talk and think, differently but sometimes better than us. They are people, too, and they love—their kids, a cold drink of water on a hot day, unexpected sex in the morning—as much and maybe more than we do. We’re not as alone as we thought we were. We have sisters and brothers, here on this outpost. Maybe they have something to teach us. Maybe the Universe is kinder than we suspected. We’ll eat them all, we say. We’ll turn every last one of the beautiful ones into bacon and chicken fingers and Big Macs. We’ll wear their skin. Take the butterflies with you, when you go.

Here on this little blue paradise, this miracle, this fairy tale of a place, we have never been angrier. We have never been more awful.

When I was little, I ran right into the path of a rolling blue Chevrolet. The driver didn’t have time for brakes, but he was good with the steering wheel and barely missed me. I remember the smell of hot tires. My pretty mom snatched me out of the road. Red-faced and screaming, she slapped the shit out of me until my dad pulled me away. She walked away, crying.

I remember—bereft. I almost died and she called me a little bastard.

My dad told me something, and I never forgot it:

Sometimes, he said, when people are terrible it’s because they’re scared and they don’t know how to say they love you.

It’s true.

Maybe when we’re terrible, when we fly flags and vote for sick leaders and buy guns and spread hate, we’re just scared. We’d rather throw the birthday cake on the floor than see our little sister get a slightly bigger piece. Maybe we still have time to settle the fuck down.

Sometimes, when I see a group of young people run through a waterfall barefoot while it snows, I think maybe we’ll make it. I don’t close the Kid’s bedroom door any more, because I think the black dog who loves him deserves to look inside and believe that someday he’ll be back. Sometimes, I think the Universe cares deeply, and knew what she was doing when she started this story and put us here. I think there might be a Dwight Clark catch in the end zone, and love wins this thing.

How incredibly lucky we are to have been here in 2023, on this lovely little planet, with our wet t-shirts and bare feet. David Bowie is gone, but he’s still on the radio. It’s going to be a beautiful 2024.

Happy new year. Be sweet, no matter what.