New year

I’m reading a book about the past. Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov is about a man who opens a clinic of the past for patients with alzheimers, dementia and amnesia. First each room in the clinic represents a different decade of the twentieth century. This spreads to become whole floors, with different rooms for each year. Whole communities soon become 1972, 1984 or 1969, and eventually whole countries want to adapt a common past rather than head into the future. Because the past is something secure and certain, whereas the future is unknown. We know that we can survive the past, and ten years ago feel nearer than ten years from now.

It was my birthday recently. I have entered a new year, I am heading into the future.

The future is scary, it always has been. But the past is also scary: it rears its head in dreams, behaviours and fears. It determines the future. It’s also a lot to live up to too much history.

No, at this time of year, of renewal, rebirth and revelling, I feel hope for the future. I will take the blank page of the unknown, rather than the cluttered mess of the past. Happy New Year, I say.