Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

After much dithering, I let myself be persuaded to go to a party last night. I got a ride over from Arthur, Bernadette, and Kevin, who were bringing their pet rat over to meet some of their friends. An odd idea, perhaps, but it worked.

For the most part, it felt like other parties: we sat around, ate, and talked. Scratch mentioned having worked as a chimneysweep for 17 years, and was asked for advice about Moshe's chimney. He took a look at it, came back, and explained what he thought the previous sweep had done wrong. In the process, we got a basic explanation of the design of the chimney, and how an ash pit works. Much fun. I grew up in a similar house, but we didn't have a fireplace. We had an abstract stained glass window in the stairwell, which hardly seems like a fair trade.

Just before midnight, Moshe opened the champagne, turned the TV on so we could watch Times Square and the countdown to midnight, and told people not to turn the sound on. OK, we can count down quite happily by ourselves--and when that roomful of science fiction fans got to "zero," I added "takeoff." [It should have been "liftoff"; next time I'll get it right.] Then Moshe pushed a button, and the strains of "Also Spracht Zarathustra" filled the room.

Absolutely perfect. Smiles, laughter, and some discussion of "okay, this is the future, where's my X?" including "where's my worldwide computer network? Oh, wait, I've got that." We found a monolith in Times Square--not difficult, these days, if you can look past the neon.

One of the cable channels was showing 2001: A Space Odyssey. At least half the people there wound up watching the movie, while a few of us sat in the kitchen and talked.

I thanked Lise for persuading me to come to the party: it was the right place for me to be at that moment.