10...9...8...

I can't honestly say I'm one of those whoop & holler types when it comes to New Year's. I loathe champagne, find noise-makers highly unpleasant, and generally don't give a damn about a dropping ball or Dick Clark (no offense, Dick).

Still, in an effort to be magnanimous, I'm trying to stir up a degree of enthusiasm for the annual calendar-morph this year. Why? Well, beyond "why the hell not?", it's beyond obvious that if we all need a change, it's now.

Had I any photoshop skills at all, Baby New Year would have had Fitzgerald's face pasted in, so you'll just have to imagine that for yourselves. And, I must confess that the rumors of Abramoff's plea deal being announced "as early as Tuesday" fill me with an anticipation akin to that normally felt by kids on Christmas Eve. And it's not pure schadenfreude, incidentally (though that is part of it, I can't deny). I'm simply in the mood for a reckoning, plain and simple. I want the karmic wheel to spin around and serve us up a hot, steaming pile of justice. A naive desire? Perhaps, but mine nonetheless.

Eons ago, I studied the fluffier things in the world like astrology, tarot cards & numerology (it's ok, you can snicker, I won't hold it against you). It was fun, it was intriguing, and like anyone else searching for the Big Why, it provided equal parts relief and bewilderment. I took all of it with a grain of salt, much like I do all things "metaphysical" or "religious", and from time to time, I let my imagination wander back that way, if only in search of a diversion from the sea of Legos, Sesame Street, utility bills and dirty laundry that I'm surrounded with each day.

So, putting on my cob-web covered numerologist hat (and my apologies in advance to those more "serious students" that object to my half-assed, and arguably incorrect, methodology), I contemplate the coming year.

The basic rules are this: To find the "vibration" for a thing/person/event, you add the individual digits together until you reduce to a single number. If we were going to use my birth year for example, we'd add 1 + 9 + 6 + 8. That yields 24. Then we add 2 + 4 to yield 6. If we wanted to explore the numerological significance of the year I was born, then, we'd look up 6.

So, let's do the same for 2006. Easy peasy. 2 + 6 (obviously the zeros don't count) yields 8. My rusty memory chirps up to tell me that 8 is a number of transformation, and given the impending elections, this strikes me as rife with potential. Some say it's also a number of justice, of authority and strength. It's also alleged to represent intensity, so if any of this means a hill of beans at all, it sounds to me like the coming year may be quite a roller coaster ride, indeed. Following along, 2007 will be a "9" year (last in a 9-year cycle) and 2008, just in time for the presidential election, will put us in the lap of a fresh "1" year, that of new beginnings.

Naturally, it's as likely as not that all of this is pure poppycock, but for the moment, it's a thought I like to entertain. Some people pick up their Bibles, some people read their horoscopes. Institution and tradition aside, we all search for the same thing: A reason larger than ourselves, a cause larger than our own tempestuous wills, a purpose larger than the screaming of the id.

I'd like to believe that this year will herald the change we, and this country, so desperately need, since the alternatives, to me, seem dire and bleak. Focusing on the latter is apt to do little more than lead us all to drink heavily and carry weapons in our cars, so even if our inspiration comes from something as questionable as back-of-the-napkin numerology, that's alright by me.

So, raise a glass to a better world, no matter how likely you are to find it. Barring insanity, optimism is really our only option.

Blessings to you and yours, and thanks for reading.