I ran into a guy I know out and about yesterday.  We decided to grab a coffee. It being the first day of the new year, we started by summing up the old, as you do.  This fellow's a techie, fancies himself somewhat serious, and so tends to talk politics with an off-putting intensity some reserve for life. 

The meme going around the serious set is that last year was pretty rotten, which, in some ways, I suppose it was.  You don't have to look far for evidence:  "Super-rich reel as fortunes cut in half" The Times of London screams. Indeed, global stocks lost almost half their value in 2008.  $14 trillion in market capitalization was erased from world stock markets.  It was a cataclysmic year on Wall Street, maybe the worst year ever. 

Housing's worst year.  The worst year ever for newspapers. The worst year ever in movies.  Music Biz, too. Worst... sports... year... ever. 

My coffee mate concurred, of course, on all counts, though his situation, his ability to go about his day-to-day routines, had not changed for the worse, and may actually have improved a little.  As an automobile commuter, he should have been giddy at the year-end gas prices, which, after going sky-high, had dropped to a five-year low . 

His rent hadn't increased.  He hadn't lost his job, and on account of seniority and rank, wasn't likely to. Nor had his salary been slashed.  By his own admission he wasn't sacrificing any of the modest pleasures — whiling away the hours at his favorite cafe, eating out on occasion, going to the cinema — that he was accustomed to.

I agreed that it had been a dismal year for the markets, and that people were hurting, although no one I knew personally had lost their livelihoods, and those whose finances were in a rut were used to it by now.  Where I come from, no one ever said it was going to be easy.  But you muddle through somehow. 

I had muddled through '08 without event.  In fact, I finished out the year ahead financially for the first time in recent memory.  I was enjoying my new job.  Doing some creative work.  My garden had done me proud.  My personal relationships were robust.  My dance-card was full (there's actually a wait-list — email me for details).  I have my health. I have a full head of hair, all my teeth, fingers and toes.  Both my testicles (knock on wood).  Most of my marbles.  Another year intact.  I really can't complain. 

And as for the year ahead?  I chirruped on about my resolution to cut down on porn (it's gotten so ridiculous lately I've even branched out to the straight stuff) and to put on ten pounds (I'm a little on the lean side and don't want to end up a piece of gristle like Madonna). 

What about you? I asked this fellow.  What's on tap for 2009?

He leaned in conspiratorially.  His eyes darted left and right, and then, all flinty, he fixed them on me.

"Things are going to get really bad," he hissed.  "Like really bad."

"From the worst to worse than the worst," I nodded appreciatively.  "That's pretty bad, all right."

"You're not kidding, brother!"

He sat back and folded his arms resolutely.  A satisfied silence befell us.  I sipped my coffee. 

Truth is, I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but it was not immediately clear to me what "really bad" meant to someone with no practical knowledge of it.  I knew it would be something abstract involving capitalism and the third world masses.  Maybe a rain forest or two.  Nothing like higher utility bills and tightening our belts for the "where's the outrage???" crowd.  It's all mass terror and global chaos from here on out. 

"Lots of people with guns who hate us," to be precise. 

"Oh," I said. "That."

I was about to explain that incident with my ex and his new boyfriend when I realized my coffee mate was actually talking about Islamic Jihad.  Whew, I thought.  No real danger.  (I'm still not taking off the flak jacket, bitches, so don't even.)

Unfortunately a flak jacket can't protect you from being bored to death by someone trying to convince you that 2009 will finally be the year the terrorists win. The year the teetering world economy finally collapses, the masses rise up, and... and...

And what? 

It's nonsense, of course.  I'd almost rather hear the hopesters bang on about the dawning of the Age of Obama.  Even the Fundies with their numerological proof of imminent Rapture are more fun than these superserious, supercilious Bourgeois rebels.  Never satisfied with the system that sustains every element of their superfluous existence, they gather in coffeehouse cabals to kvetch about it.  Good thing their thirst for justice is easily enough quenched by that fair-trade coffee they suck down by the gallon.

Somehow I doubt the world will end in '09, despite our best efforts and those of our committed foes.  Or maybe it will.  Somehow, for someone somewhere it ends every day, doesn't it?  Who knows but we may see bread lines on Main Street.  We may all end up in Obama's resurrected WPA doing the work Americans didn't use to want to do. Jihadists may drop from the sky like frogs from a waterspout and rain havoc on Somerville.  But none of it is within the province of my private hopes and fears. 

I have every confidence the world will unravel of its own accord.  And when the skein of its unraveling reaches me I'll unravel right along with it.  Until then, I'll savor the newness of the year.  I like the idea of waking up one day out of 365 at the zero hour — in the present, with a clean slate.  Time, what Einstein called that "stubbornly persistent illusion," is useful for establishing a sequence, comparing, quantifying.  Which is essentially what we do every New Year, though there is no law in the universe that says we must.

We can certainly use this moment to look back in anger, or forward in fear, but it seems a shame to waste it, when the present affords us the best opportunity to vanquish them both.