Gregor's New Year

He began with Her Eyes. As if this pool of cool water was nestled in the heat of a summer day. Bordered perhaps by a wall of lushly bubbled shrubs like green reflections of the stratocumulus plumes above, though slightly warped. Now, if one were to look at the surface of water, which will ripple gently, they would glimpse a truer, though not absolute, reflection of the sky above, as well as a fleeting picture of themselves; and finally realize that they are also seeing through the surface, into the depths and down to the floor of the pool.

To a cacophony of car horns he, Gregor Pliny, slammed on his brakes, coming back into material with a sudden awareness that he had almost (as in not entirely) sped through a red light. He shifted into reverse and rolled backwards out of the nexus of street. Around him the car spirits shouted and pushed their palms into their steering wheels so that honks filled the air as if Gregor were in the midst of an agitated flock of geese. Che Guevaraesque fists shook in frustration through open windows. Gregor smiled sheepishly and shrugged within the confines of his own vehicle. New Year’s day.

“So this is how the new year begins,” he thought dreamily, remembering Her as traffic began to flow again after the brief interruption. He would say this phrase to himself throughout this New Year’s day, which proved to be a rather long one, and each time this phrase was repeated, the voice in his head would adopt a morose, ironic, dreamy, or contented lilt depending on his reaction to the particular moment.

For example, when he finally finished the aforementioned drive home, his girlfriend, Bianca said in a whiny pitch: “Dinner’s cold, you were supposed to be home an hour ago.” Gregor smiled in his mind and thought ironically, “So this is how the new year begins. Just like the old one.”

And so, we are informed that the eyes, Her Eyes, with which Gregor began, did not belong to Bianca, but belonged to a long lost love of Gregor’s. He had known Her in California, a place he had left and which he now pictured through his memory as a paradigm of sun-drenched moments in the presence of Her. Since Bianca constantly and tragically reminded him of Her, Gregor now morosely thought again: “So this is how the new year begins.”