December 2000. The journal went quiet. Two marathons done. The election still unresolved. Amsterdam behind me. The Seattle rain doing its thing.
In place of an entry, the site had this. Which, if you think about it, said everything that needed saying. The full text of The Waste Land is here.
The Waste Land — The Burial of the Dead
T.S. Eliot · 1922
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is a shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
— T.S. Eliot, 1922 · Read the full poem at the Poetry Foundation →
The rest of that December is lost. The Wayback Machine didn't capture it. Just this poem, standing in for whatever was going on. January was coming.