Happy New Year

I can't remember what I was doing this time last year. It was Lahore and winter and every morning I would wake up in the cold and go to work on the nephrology service of a local hospital. I would take a rickshaw in the morning and a bus in the afternoon and while waiting for the bus I would stand by the road and eat raw guavas spiced with rock salt from the back of a donkey cart. One of the conductors on that bus was familiar with me and when we saw each other, he would casually ignore my fare with a smile and move on to the next passenger. We never spoke.

That was last year.

This year I find myself looking at the sunset through a pair of large picture windows. There is a barn and a silo and a vast stretch of land swathed in the colors of dusk. A thin metal reindeer stands patiently on the grass waiting to be lit. All morning a mist had obscured the view but now you can see far into the distance where some woods quietly melt into the dark. A fire sits crouched by my feet as I watch the trees take on spectral forms. In a few moments it will be time to turn on the lights and return to objects their familiar shapes. The blinds will be drawn, the twilight replaced by electric lamps, and the house will fill with the chic, urban fuss of revelry. Only the reindeer, waiting patiently on the lawn outside, will witness in the sky the small flowering of the moon.