007 Minus 2

My name is Bond. James Bond. And yes, I am still alive, quite well and, comparatively so, fairly fit in this, my 81st year. As things are, and especially considering all that I had been through in my life, I should consider myself quite fortunate to have persevered this long. Although, I can’t imagine what much more I’d want to do beyond that which I have already been doing for at least the last decade - relaxing on the veranda of my villa overlooking the Mediterranean, here where I live in the south of France, and reading the books I had long neglected due to my dutifully having had served Queen and Country.

I suppose a certain settling in of a weariness or ennui is inevitable in one’s waning days. I perhaps should feel more enlivened than I do, but there always seems to be, as has been for quite some time now, a pervading pall of having before seen it all and done it all that overhangs my remaining time. Not to mention the physical aches that permeate my being from the abuse to which I had subjected my body in the field in my more robust years and from the unforgiving wear-and-tear of age itself of late, which collectively have taken a toll on me in their own insidious ways as daily reminders of one's vulnerabilities. There no longer are any new adventures for me to pursue nor vistas to explore with any of the lust and vigour of my youth, those days have long past, with only traces of them left as both fond and bitter reminiscences. Often I am left to feel as though I have become a hollow relic.

I suppose there is something to be said for mortality, however. After one has exhausted life’s experiences at some point, there appears to be little rationale to continue onward. But one does it nevertheless. Now I can understand how one may want to prolong one’s days rather than to live them. In my case, perhaps to see for how long I can futilely outmaneouvre my final and unvanquishable foe, the Grim Reaper. A quite flimsy reason for persisting forward, if you ask me, for doubtlessly I shall be defeated in the end. But as one’s hold on life is tenuous at best, perhaps the reasons one fabricates for oneself to continue onward can also only be tenuous - at best.

But I do think I should refrain from being much too introspective and philosophical for what should be a more festive frame of mind for me right now. It is, after all, a brand new day, the very first day, of a brand new year, 2005. And to that, accompanied by my ritualistic early evening glass of a medium vodka dry martini - shaken, of course, not stirred - I must declare, if only to myself, yet another Happy New Year.