Overwhelmed with festivities, after-dinners and brother-in-law which raises hypertension. Every time I open the fridge, from a container, the surviving prawns look at me with crossed eyes and mustaches, ‘hello, Dolly’. And the arrival of 2023 and its majesties from the East still remains to be celebrated. I read in the December barometer of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) that lThe majority of Spaniards (57.4%) attend a New Year’s Eve celebration or party, although the poll does not gut the boldness with which they go to those cotillions and family soirees. On this occasion, I join the remaining 42.3%.
After an atomic 2022 in bustle, I don’t have the body for hats and blowouts, but a temper that asks for a sofa, a movie, hours of reading ahead, like a sleepless owl, a good wine, seedless grapes without their skins, and some wish formulated between whispers, such as that the Chinese year of the rabbit does not bring another variant of the damn virus. Calm down, ball on the ground, ommmmm.
NEW YORK, 1939
I spend the last hours of the year raking in the diaries of great writers how do they manage when the chimes arrive. Curiously, large gaps and gaps open up in their notebooks as the Christmas holidays approach, a jump from mid-December to January, a sucking black hole. The sprawl usually surprises a few at work, like Gil de Biedma or Rafael Chirbes. the mood of Anaïs Nin, with a very outgoing nature, oscillates according to the year; in 1939, in New York, he notes: “Great sadness last night when I heard from my bed the New Year’s celebration in the streets.” He is bothered by excitement and haste; instead, in 1944, he was entranced in Harlem with a New Year’s Eve of dancing, joy and humanity.
ANTIOQUIA, 1993
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I have laughed with ‘What was present. (Diaries 1985-2006)’, from the Colombian Hector Abad Faciolince, when on New Year’s Eve 1993, his own family and politicians gathered at the La Inés farm, in the department of Antioquia, as well as unexpected visits. Parranda, rum, vallenatos at full blast and the obligation to put on a brave face. The writer manages to take refuge in his room, but instantly his mother-in-law bursts in, tipsy, to eat his head.
At 2:30 a.m., Patricia Highsmith celebrates the 1947 premiere in her diary. He toasts “for all the demons, lusts, passions, greed, envy, hatred, strange desires, spectral and real enemies, the army of memories with which I battle; I hope they never give me a break.” In her own way, the most misanthropic of female writers raises her glass for what most of us celebrate: the wonder of continuing in battle.