The Future Is Now

And boom... just like that, it's the year 2020. The fucking future, to my very young old brain. Back in tenth grade creative writing class, I wrote a ghastly little science fiction story called "Invasion From Space," set in this very year. To the best of my recollection, it was a cross between The War of the Worlds and The Mysterians. The tale featured an all-Japanese cast of characters, a thing I considered perfectly proper since, at the time, it seemed a certainty that Toho Co. LTD would one day want to turn all my stories into films. (Take note, Toho. I'm still waiting.) The thing I most remember about "Invasion From Space" was my teacher criticizing a scene in which a squadron of jet fighters engaged a gaggle of UFOs. "In the year 2020, there probably won't be any jet planes," she wrote in red ink. Rather than edit the jets out of the story, I added a note to the effect that, au contraire, jet technology would still be prevalent; it would just be several generations more advanced than the then-current 1974 models. And my prediction pretty much came to pass.

Of course, 2020 is nothing like my tenth grade self could have imagined. We have a half-witted, narcissistic, semi-literate baboon as a president who, consistent with his chronically egregious behavior, has set in motion a sequence of events that could mire the US in yet another prolonged and very dire conflict in the Middle East. The entire continent of Australia is a conflagration (see New South Wales: The Devil's Inferno), with no relief on the horizon. Venice — which Brugger, along with friends Terry & Beth only just quitted a little over a month ago — has suffered grave damage in the worst flooding it has seen in almost a century. Politically, the US is more divided than I've ever seen it in my lifetime, with the Brain Death Chorale from either political extreme singing loudly and proudly. I'm more than halfway convinced that the activation of the CERN Hadron Collider some years back opened a wormhole to the Bizarro world, and a portion of it bonded with ours. Really, it's the only explanation that makes sense.

On the personal front, 2019 was, almost from start to finish, a train wreck, with my family's medical issues front and center 24/7/365. Still and all, there were many bright spots: last year's New Year's celebration in Myrtle Beach with our friends the Nelsons and the Broadwells; going to Midland, MI, back in January to see the Bruggers; going to Berlin, OH, also to see the Bruggers; another trip to Myrtle Beach in July, also with the Nelsons and Broadwells; lots of geocaching with The Usual Suspects (Old Rob, Yoda Rob, Fishdownthestair, Diefenbaker, Shoffner, Suntigres, BigG7777), Skyhawk63, Punkins19, and others; hanging out with the Albaneses; the releases of my Ameri-Scares novels, West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman and Michigan: The Dragon of Lake Superior, from Crossroad Press; seeing my daughter, Allison, a couple of times, even if not under the happiest of circumstances; and le piece de resistance, the trip to the Mediterranean in October, which took us to Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, France, and Spain.

Me, myself, and I... well, when I turned 60 this past year, any number of niggling physical issues set in almost overnight, making day-to-day existence a tad more taxing. Sometimes more than a tad. Still, all things considered, I can only complain a little. There will always be those in better and worse places than I, and on the scale of life, it would be a lie to say that, at least for now, I occupy anything other than the "better" side of it. Taking the larger view isn't always the world's easiest thing to do, especially when the issues, some large and some small, pile up like a series of crashes on I-40 at rush hour. One thing is for certain: we came from the Great Beyond and will go back to it, and the only thing that matters in the here and now is how we live it. That's very easy to say, of course. Day-to-day reality sometimes has a tendency to cold-cock that lovely long view of life. It does for this old dude, anyway.

Finally, to Kimberly Ann Brugger: you remain the one human being in my life who keeps me sane and relatively stable. This year will make ten years together, all of which were made better — even damn near perfect — by your presence, your energy, and your love. At times in the past, I thought I knew what it meant to love, to be in love. Like hell I did. I wish I had, for it would have been fairer to all involved. Sometimes, I think it takes a rough ride, even a wrong ride, to get where one is meant to be, if such is even possible. Maybe it is.

Happy Bloody New Year to my readers, my friends, my peers, and all the rest of you out there. Well, most of you, anyway.