friendships and family and 2025

Somehow it just seemed obvious to earlier write my 2024 ending blog post yet not end it. Why? Well because it’s forever better to make no guarantees I can’t keep. Instead I left the house this morning wanting to write something more on 2024. Things that happened. Or did not. How this complex yet simple web of friendship and family crosses so many paths. My wife is the one that sees all the connections. From Facebook to TikTok. To neighbors. Somehow all this becomes this thing to her. This matrix of movement and life. I just write the things. I don’t vicariously live them.

It’s enough to have one person with all the socials. The day in and out of where they all meet up or anger when alin forgets to pay her cellular service. Then she suddenly realizes her TikTok ain’t. Her Facebook won’t. Wifi is not everywhere she goes. She will stop though where it does exist to message me plaintively,

Lovely. My internet not working and no wifi. Please help. You know I need this. Please pay for me.

Don’t you feel and hear the angst? The pain. So of course I would pay. She will need all the social connections she can muster. Especially with 2024 ending.

Just this morning she wondered what day it was. Was it already the 31st. I told her she missed new years and we already were in January. She scowls. Mutters in khmer. Looks at her iphone. It’s day 30 she remarks.

then it’s to friends and family

And where it all blends together. Where she finds all the goodness of her social fabric. Somehow this person becomes that sister. Another leaves the fold. Asked my wife to give her money. She pointedly told the person it would not happen so stop asking. Time you think to block on Facebook ? Well no. There’s this other realm. Perhaps a social purgatory where misbehaving friends end up for her.

Another almost friend asks for money end of each month for work she no longer does. Strange that this person was not banished.

I just watch

And write. I feel like one of the spectators. Like I sit on the edge of the familiar and watch my wife cycle through the days now. She’s happy. She loves the people next door. She tells me. They love her. Everyone loves each other. Ain’t life just a grand thing.

Meanwhile I do watch. It feels like I just have the things I need. She has what she wants. There’s a difference of course between needing and wanting. I really want nothing. Nothing is a curious word. I rip it apart and it’s no thing. Like apart and a part. I don’t know why these occur to me. It’s like I’ll take being apart and really wanting nothing. I leave it to my wife to be a part and want things.

And that’s how 2025 arrives and 2024 leaves. I’ll just turn off the light and not plug in the Venn diagram night light. Send this to blot. Feel somehow not done. Like each thing should say,

Continued

Maybe that’s why I rebel against saying done to things. Why certain things seem so perfect to this desire to never finish a thing I love.

swinging

Like some photo of just going and not saying done.