For much of my life, I’ve looked for a way to make sense out of New Year’s Eve, our most loosely defined and ephemeral holiday, I think. I’ve never been able to do it. If you are a social party type, New Year’s Eve is easy, just get some liquor and good friends and whoop it up. In our increasingly puritanical and up-tight culture, even that is increasingly frowned upon. I understand Thanksgiving, that’s about finding great discounts on new technology, and Christmas, as we all know, is about feeling bad about your family. When I  lived in Greenwich Village some years ago, I did troop uptown on the subway to stand in Times Square and watch the balloon drop (before 9/11 and all those barricades) but once is enough for me, I froze my butt off, dodged drunks all night  and went home at 3 a.m. wondering precisely what I was celebrating.

I did meet a wonderful young woman on the subway home and we did ring in the New Year in a wonderful way, ending up at dawn on the Staten Island Ferry.

New Year’s Eve has not yet been completely corporatized and monetized, I don’t think, so it is still ours to try and make sense of. Most of the people I know like to stay home and watch TV. I like to plan things, I love ritual, the marking of occasions.

During my last couple of years at Bedlam Farm, we hosted some friends and we all make plans for the New Year and shared the common experience of wanting to change our lives. One couple wanted to move to Vermont, another to Maine, one friend wanted to find a partner, Maria and i wanted to sell Bedlam Farm and move to a different kind of farm. Such goals were interesting, and looking back on it, we had mixed results.

Our Vermont-seeking friends haven’t moved yet, the couple who wanted to go to Maine did go and seem happy there, our friend is still looking for a partner, and Maria and I didn’t sell Bedlam Farm, but we did move. I don’t think such goal-planning is really the stuff of true friendship, it is too external. I think New Year’s gatherings – all gatherings – work for me when there are good friends to like to sit and talk and where nothing is expected other than trust and comfort and companionship. Such friends are rare.

I am allergic to games and no good at chit-chat, so I’m excited about this year’s plan – two or three good friends getting together for a Tarot Card reading, talk, making a fire outside, food. I’m going to make two of my multi-grain pizzas there, nobody else wants to cook and I love cooking, I’m thinking one of the pizzas will be goat cheese and chopped clams, the other tomato sauce and chicken sausage and kale.

I’m not into resolutions, I think goals and wishes evolve on their own, they come out of life rather than wishing for me. I always want the same thing. I want everybody I know to be happy. I want to write great books, publish a great blog, take great photos, watch Maria grow and prosper, have sex until the day I keel over and die, nourish my good and growing friendships, learn more about the animals I love with, and give them good and proper lives.

I am achieving some balance in my life – work, love, creativity, growth and chance. My goal for this year is to learn how to be me, to live with me, to accept me. For the first time in my life, I don’t really want more than what I have, I want more of the same. I don’t think I can improve on that, except perhaps to score an international best-seller that would give me enough money to take Maria to Florence for a few weeks. Barring that, Disney World in February. It turns out I am a simple man after all, I just never knew it.

Tonight, I want to plan my recipe,  watch “Blazing Saddles,” the Mel Brooks Western spoof, and call up the people I love and wish them Happy New Year. It turns out Maria is a move goofball, she loves dumb comedies, and so do I, we sit on the sofa and laugh like some fraternity shitheads at a beer party.  I also have to prepare my New Year’s pizza ingredients, I love being in the kitchen at parties, I don’t have to make small talk.