It doesn't escape me that my favorite christmas song is also one of the saddest songs I know. It's not a lyric I can relate to in a literal way, I just love the writers take on the holiday.
I understand that to is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year and all that; and I will concede that I do have some wonderful memories of this time of year, but it is by far my least favorite holiday. I hate the rabid consumerism associated with it but that is not the main reason. The holiday just has never really clicked with me on a base level. Norman Rockwell I am not. This year has it's own set of unique circumstances associated with it that in no way make it likely to change that – seven days out it is shaping up to be the consummate example of “just another day”. I do not find this depressing, I am merely dispassionate about the entire affair. This is not generally much of a conversation topic among my friends and I – most people take my feelings about it as a reason to try and “make it better”. I see the reasoning, and appreciate their motives. I don't think of my lack of christmas cheer as a problem, however, it is just the way it is. To be brutally honest, the only thing I really love about this holiday is watching my children tear into their gifts, and that isn't on the menu this year.
Joyeux noel, everyone. Peace, love and good happiness stuff to you all.
“they got Christmas Muzak
piped in through the ceiling
and the refills of coffee
are always for free
and the waitress on graveyard
and the surly night manager
are wishing that all of us losers would leave
there’s a star on the sign
at the Texaco Station
like the star long ago
on that midnight clear
as I look all around
at these cold, empty faces
I doubt that you'd find many wise men here
and I'm dreaming about
a silent night
holy night
when things were alright
and I'm dreaming about
how my life could have been
if only, if only, if only
but somewhere down the road
I gave up that fight
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight
once I had a home
and a wife and a daughter
had a company job
earning middle-class pay
then Lisa got killed
by a car near the schoolyard
and my wife started drinking
just to get through each day
I will never forget that little red wagon
turning to rust all alone in the rain
one morning I flagged down
a truck on the highway
I just couldn't bear to go back there again
and I'm dreaming about
a silent night
holy night
when things were alright
and I'm dreaming about
how my life could have been
if only, if only, if only
well, it's not just the blind man
who loses his sight
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight
they say
life's made of cruel circumstance
fate plays the tune and we dance
dance til we drop
in the dust and we're gone
and the world just goes on
the cop at the counter
he's the guardian angel
he watches these orphans
through dark mirrored shades
and the register rings
like a bell sadly tolling
for the fools we've become
and the price that we paid
oh when I was a boy
I believed in Christmas
miracle season to make a new start
I don't need no miracle, sweet baby Jesus
just help me find
some kind of hope in my heart
and I'm dreaming about
a silent night
holy night
when things were alright
and I'm dreaming about
how my life could have been
if only, if only, if only
but I'll still be here
at the morning's first light
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight”
~Randy Stonehill
Friday, December 17
Wednesday, December 8
Dream Away
“All you good-doers lay your weary heads
Thorn filled pillows on feather beds
Sing your love songs on Sunday morning
Close your eyes and we'll
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away
All you lonely hearts will you ever love
Diamond rings stained with red-rose blood
Sing your songs about valentine mourning
Take my hand and we'll
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away
Shine your light
Can't see too good at night
But I know
I know where they come from
Where they go
All you still unborn hide your pretty faces
Mother's dirty nails don't care about you
Comatose in your private nightmare and
You're not far but one
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away”
- the northern pikes
Ok, so I have been avoiding writing for the last days.
Luckily, its not like I have an avid readership or anything, so no harm done.
The last few months have taught me that I have a serious love/hate relationship with being alone – and also that I am far from being actually “alone” - which is a really great thing. I am blessed to have people in my life that are wonderful – I know that I am loved, even that I am indeed lovely. (wow that sounds pathetic as I read it back, true as it may be)
If you are reading this (and I am pretty sure you are at this point...) I hope that it is evident that I don't really like to bitch and moan about things. Honestly, I don't. Anyhow, I am realizing even more these days that there is a really fine line between knowing the right thing to choose and actually choosing it. I would like to think that I can make that choice correctly when required, but a large part of me thinks I am totally full of shit for thinking that. My ape brain self is still at heart a hedonist – and there are plenty of situations in life where it has a LOT of pull in my decision making. I suppose that this is true for a lot of us even if we choose not to admit it. Sure, we all want to believe that we are strong enough to be in control of our actions on a conscious level and that our decision making is unimpaired. Most of us are at least strong enough to take responsibility for those actions.
The real trouble is that we often mistake fear for strength. We cave into our base level, knee-jerk reactions and then justify ourselves after the fact by stiffening our spine and telling anyone who will listen what out reasoning was.
“they did blah, blah, blah.”
“they failed to do yadda, yadda, yadda”
“I couldn't do this because...”
It's all the same bullshit at the end of the day. We do what we do. Very few of us are in a situation where there is a gun to our head at decision time. We stand alone at that moment and we choose what we will do, whether or not we will consider the result; we choose our own outcome. Pinning our situation on another is not strength, it is the highest form of cowardice.
Thorn filled pillows on feather beds
Sing your love songs on Sunday morning
Close your eyes and we'll
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away
All you lonely hearts will you ever love
Diamond rings stained with red-rose blood
Sing your songs about valentine mourning
Take my hand and we'll
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away
Shine your light
Can't see too good at night
But I know
I know where they come from
Where they go
All you still unborn hide your pretty faces
Mother's dirty nails don't care about you
Comatose in your private nightmare and
You're not far but one
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away”
- the northern pikes
Ok, so I have been avoiding writing for the last days.
Luckily, its not like I have an avid readership or anything, so no harm done.
The last few months have taught me that I have a serious love/hate relationship with being alone – and also that I am far from being actually “alone” - which is a really great thing. I am blessed to have people in my life that are wonderful – I know that I am loved, even that I am indeed lovely. (wow that sounds pathetic as I read it back, true as it may be)
If you are reading this (and I am pretty sure you are at this point...) I hope that it is evident that I don't really like to bitch and moan about things. Honestly, I don't. Anyhow, I am realizing even more these days that there is a really fine line between knowing the right thing to choose and actually choosing it. I would like to think that I can make that choice correctly when required, but a large part of me thinks I am totally full of shit for thinking that. My ape brain self is still at heart a hedonist – and there are plenty of situations in life where it has a LOT of pull in my decision making. I suppose that this is true for a lot of us even if we choose not to admit it. Sure, we all want to believe that we are strong enough to be in control of our actions on a conscious level and that our decision making is unimpaired. Most of us are at least strong enough to take responsibility for those actions.
The real trouble is that we often mistake fear for strength. We cave into our base level, knee-jerk reactions and then justify ourselves after the fact by stiffening our spine and telling anyone who will listen what out reasoning was.
“they did blah, blah, blah.”
“they failed to do yadda, yadda, yadda”
“I couldn't do this because...”
It's all the same bullshit at the end of the day. We do what we do. Very few of us are in a situation where there is a gun to our head at decision time. We stand alone at that moment and we choose what we will do, whether or not we will consider the result; we choose our own outcome. Pinning our situation on another is not strength, it is the highest form of cowardice.
Friday, December 3
Snake
I have a somewhat closeted and extremely underexposed love of poetry. Saw this today and loved it, so I thought it wise to share.
-----
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough
before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down,
over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet,
to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,
and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing
into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness,
and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind
convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Taormina, 1923
D.H. Lawrence
-----
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough
before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down,
over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet,
to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,
and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing
into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness,
and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind
convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Taormina, 1923
D.H. Lawrence
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