On New Year's.

I can't really remember when I started it. I remember standing outside the Tavern, I remember standing on rooftops, I remember walking through the desolate streets of Ocean City.

It's a simple little ritual. Find a moment after midnight to get away, to slip out into the night with a glass of whiskey in my hand, and empty my mind. Find a second of stillness in the dark, and think. Think of those that matter to me. Where they are, what they might be doing.

Tonight I'll think of those under the roof I'll share, the truest beauty of good friends mere minutes away.

Tonight I'll think of those in the great city I walked away from, spent laughing with friends and significant others and wives and husbands.

Tonight I'll think of those who celebrated before me, curled up in beds in London, on a couch in Bruges, getting on a train to Budapest.

Tonight I'll think of those close but not close enough, sharing this city and my heart. Of the girl in Boston, the one in DC, the family in Connecticut and New Jersey and Pittsburgh.

Tonight I'll think of those in time zones west, with their boyfriend's family in Chicago, with his wife in LA.

These are the people I love, that have meaning to me. I will stand on this whirling planet, and I will love them; I will pray they find a moment of quiet to sit in, and pray they can feel it as I speak these borrowed words.

Now we are known.

We take root.

Happy 2014.