What's Up With 2017?

The next Prez election is 2016.

There. I have the concept of the year 2016 in my head, sort of fuzzy, but it's there. I also have a faint glimmer of 2015 and 2016; 2016 is the year during which money will flow into politics like Orcs into the mines of Moria.
2016 is in my head pretty good.
I have 2012 and 2013 in there, too. Those were the years of taking care of my father and the efflorescence of funerary rites: 4 important people and my mother's cat... whom, truth be told, she probably misses more than anyone else.

2014 is well ensconced in the old noggin. It a year of Big Sucks, but no one can deny that it is in the cranium, doing its dirty work. I hear a whimper from 2018 and a sluggish stumble from 2019.

2017 is not there, however.

This rather surprised me last night, because I could "sense" all the other years, but there was nothing for 2017.

What I mean by this is the following:
If you remember my post "Detroit Tigers Win The Central Division !"  when the Detroit Tigers were playing the Minnesaota Twins towards the end of the baseball season, (http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2014/10/detroit-tigers-win-central-division.html)
you may recall that my friend and I made a bet on the outcome of that baseball game. We thought thought the Tigers would win, so we bet on the number of runs by which they would win.

He - poor schlemiel! - sort of ran over the entire baseball season in his head, tried to remember how Detroit did against the Minnesota Twins during the year so far, juggled probabilities and made Bayesian allowances for things like spirit, enthusiasm, and made a show of rationality at its best.

I, on the other hand, imaged numbers. There were the numbers 1,2,3, 4, and 5.

The numbers 1 and 2 immediately went blank, suggesting there was no way these were the numerals I sought. 4 and 5 remained visible, but immediately began to waver and get fuzzy, and sort of fade out. 3 glowed like a champ and filled the CRT screen of me mind's eye, and I held up three fingers of the left hand to him, saying the Tigers would win by three runs.

Of course, they did.
Lucky guess. All I care about is being right, not the wager money, nor how I got the right answer.

If there is anything to this nonsense of visualizing numbers and prescience, however, I sense something amiss in 2017.

In my total contempt for politicians of all stripes, I think that the Republicans will spend the next two years creating chaos; for example, the Health Care field may be subject to a burnt earth policy against the ACA, leaving a goodly number of guys, dolls, and corporate legal entities scratching their heads.

It is a time to evaluate political risk in one's investments. If you view the VIX index, two of the three periods of greatest volatility subsequent to 2008 occurred directly due to Republican shenanigans, and I think the general direction of events is downhill, regardless of who is calling the shots.

So 2017 is a black hole in my mental calendar.
Well, that black hole could be something as prosaic and humdrum as an actual black hole, a roguish interstellar interloper. (I guess a black hole is hardly prosaic. I just meant the interpretation of "black hole" would be prosaic, the sequence of letters - for the denotation of "black hole" as a massive object with a bristly beard of Hawking radiation is hardly what one would usually call "humdrum".)

The missing 2017 could be a new neurologic disorder that will soon be termed "Montag's By Proxy", wherein regular blokes have ontological gaps awaiting them in the near future.

It could be the imaginings of a fevered mind.

It could be a lapsus mentis.
(Sorry. When I say or write lapsus mentis- a slip of the mind - I always think of Marcel DuChamp, Rrose Selavy, and French rabbits, or more clearly "lapins"... and lapins makes me think of chauds lapins, and we are no longer in Kansas.)

I find it all a bit ominous of the bad kind. I used to be frightened by such things, but catastrophes, near-catastrophes, rumors of pandemics, and wars have become so commonplace and so - dare we echo Hannah Arendt ?! - banal, that I hardly care.

25 months is enough time to get ready.

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