1999 (Prose Poem)

Back in January, I wrote a prose poem called 1985, which can be read here. Over the past few weeks, and accelerated by reading a wonderful piece written by a friend reflecting on her formative experiences of the late 1990s, I have been thinking about my own memories and experiences of that time, and I thought it would a good to try a companion piece. In time, I may do one for the very early 2010s, but nothing for any later than 2014 or so, which is about when my optimism for the world finally died beyond hope of revival. As for 2025, well. What could I even say?

do you remember, she said, fingers idly moving across the screen of her phone, how it was back then, in

1999, when the century and the milennium were both waning, fading, and everyone was worried (or not worried) about the world ending or all the computers stopping at once or the second coming of whoever they were waiting for, wearing their low-ride jeans and boho shirts and pashminas, and I was 25, back then, in 

1999, newly married, thinking myself fully grown into myself (although I was not fully grown), listening to Britney and the Indigo Girls and Macy Gray, writing my interminable thesis until I was sick of the sight of it, watching The X Files on Sundays, watching The Panel on Wednesdays, recording Deep Space Nine because it was on too late to stay up for, like all my friends did, like everyone I knew did, back when screen-based stories were something we shared, a cultural zeitgeist, in 

1999 (I was 25), when I had no money but somehow no money was enough money, when I thought three times about buying the fancy cheese or the good coffee beans (back then, in 1999, when I still drank coffee), when I lived in a little house opposite a train station with my husband and our small fierce dog, a little house that shared its walls with another little house where an animal rights activist couple lived with their daschund whose name was Rama, where each day I got into my old red car and drove to the university to study or to the small publishing house perched above an old bakery to do my job, when I thought, then, in

1999, that I would one day go back to America (I was 25), that I would see more what lay between the sea and shining sea, that I would walk between the giant redwoods and set my foot on the Appalachian trail, but in fact I have never been back to America, my desire draining slowly but steadily since Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris picked up their murderous guns and dealt out dying to a school of terrified teenagers, as the spring sun was shining, on 20 April 

1999, and I remember the horror of it, the horror, mingling in my not-quite-grown brain (I was 25) with the pitiable horror of the war in Kosovo, the disgust and the waste of it, reminding me again of how far there was still to travel, back then, in 

1999, when my phone was as dumb as I felt myself to be, poring over old notebooks in the library, trying to squeeze something from them, something I could say that would mean something real, that would be germane to 

1999, when my country decided that it would not, after all, be a republic, that the Queen (then) would remain at the titular top of the tree, a decision I still find baffling, not that it meant anything at all for my life, now (although, these days, it's a King) or back in

1999, when I was learning, still, to be a person, to be a wife, reading Cryptonomicon and Chocolat and everything from the Latin American magic realists I could get my hands on, teaching myself how to cook from recipe books and magazines, playing the Broken Sword games with my husband as we learned how to solve together, taking stolen days off work to see science fiction movies, stunned by the beauty and savage grace of the Matrix, wondering whether it was speaking to what lay beyond

1999, but feeling (at 25), that the world was still going to be better, every brace of years better, that the new milennium meant a new start, not that all the pains and trials would be behind us but that the world, like me, would keep growing and keep reaching for the next waypoint on the journey to the top of the probably unattainable mountain but wouldn't it be better though, being higher, we would see so much more, our eyes would be so much clearer then, in that air; that is what I thought, in

1999 (I was 25), that it would be alright in the end, and because it wasn't, still, quite alright, that meant it wasn't the end (I never did believe in the collapsing apocalypse), and that there was gold somewhere waiting in the sunset, gold and pink and silvered clouds of a future that I might even live to see, and that's what is true, you see, that in

1999, aged 25, thinking about the brokenness of the world, I had an optimism of the mind, a lightness to my thoughts and my steps, never knowing that, one day, all that would remain to me is optimism of the will (because I will not go gentle into the night, none of us should) and, always, always, the pure sweet water of unexpected human lovingkindness, without which the world would never spin at all.