Champions Of The NFC East...

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!

Run or pass and score,
we want a lot more!
Beat 'em, Swamp 'em, Touchdown!
Let the points soar!
Fight on
Fight on
'Til you have won
Sons of Wash-ing-ton.
Rah!, Rah!, Rah!

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!

Temperature...

Without motion
there is no Heat
In our sudden stillness
we are freezing to death
But our fire scorched
and consumed
so what choice
did we have?

There is no heat
without Motion
But we only ever went around
in circles
It was inevitable
and obvious
that someday the fuel
would run out

Fire without fuel
Cold ash of promises lost
Deep winter of resentment blows
Howls echoing through our empty chests
Where blood once pumped rhythmic hot
Now silent ice blue

Every Push needs a Pull
Every Give a Take
The dance from White
to Black
to White again
is all we are
a trillion trillion trillion times over
All Creation writ large in infinite complexity
so who are We to pretend to argue
with Nature's Orders?

I am No One
I sit in silent stillness
numbed now in the Cold
I only ever wanted One Thing
And I nearly burned the whole world to get it
Before I realized the obvious truth
that all my actions
my motions
my Heat
had only pushed it further and farther from my reach

So now I am No One
Sitting in silent stillness
comforted in the Cold
knowing that there is nothing I can do
That if I am ever going to have the world I want
it is out of my hands
it is beyond my Will
and all I can do is simply wait
in the Cold
for Her
to come to me


And Hope
it wasn't only my Heat
that drew Her here

Discontent...

That was, beyond all doubt, the absolute worst christmas I have ever experienced in my entire life.  I never, ever want to go through anything like that, ever again.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Ironically, however, that might've been the best Boxing Day I've ever had.  You just never know what to expect.

So, it's probably best not to expect anything at all.

'Tis The Night Before...

It snowed today.

Our first snowfall of the year.  On Christmas Eve.  A good omen. 

A very good omen.  A White Christmas.

It's so beautiful.  It feels magickal.  This night always does, but tonight is even more so than usual.  It's almost dreamlike; like something out of a story book.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  And a Good Yule.

"May all your sacrifices and offerings this joyous season continue to hold the gods in their eternal slumber."

Diaspora...

We're going to spend tonight with my family.  My little brother and his girlfriend are in town, staying with my dad and stepmom, and so we're going over there in an hour or so to exchange presents, and have an early xmas dinner.

I'm looking forward to seeing my little brother, again.  I enjoyed spending the day with him at Thanksgiving, and regretted that I didn't get to see him more.  But seeing him twice in one month brings to the fore how much I miss my baby brother.  I've only seen him once in the last two years.  This is the second year in a row that I have to send his gifts to him; that I won't get to see his face when he opens them.

It'll feel really good to be with my family again tonight.  I'm really looking forward to it, and have been all week.  But I can't help but look forward even more to a time when all of us will be together again.

And I'm worried that it might not happen again.

What if the last time was really the last time?  And I didn't even know it.  I don't even remember it now.

It all just goes by so quickly.

Don't let it get away.


Merry Xmas, and Good Yule.

I'll Stand Before The Lord Of Song...

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not someone who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a lonely Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
Remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

          -"Hallelujah"
            Leonard Cohen, Various Positions

Yule...

Tonight is Yule.  The Winter Solstice.  The darkest, coldest night of the year.

Traditionally, the entire clan would gather together in one place tonight.  And the biggest log that could be found would be placed in the hearth to heat the entire building, and keep everyone warm and safe from the dark, cold night outside; to ward off the Wild Hunt.  This was the Yule Log, and it needed to burn all night.  And someone needed to stay up all night to tend the fire, and make sure it didn't go out (or burn the place down).

I don't have a hearth, or even a fireplace.  So, I light a candle.  But I still stay up all night, and make sure the flame doesn't go out (or burn the place down).  Tonight is the night I usually wrap all my presents; everyone else is asleep, and it's a great way to kill a few hours and keep myself awake.  I listen to xmas music, and I put on a fireplace dvd, and I drink a lot of coffee.  Sometimes, when I'm finished with my wrapping, I'll go for a walk around town in the middle of the night, and look at all the lights.

I'll perform ceremonies at sundown, at midnight, and at sunrise tomorrow.  The same words and gestures and sacrifices every year.  Honoring the gods, and the ancestors, and the family.  Sincerely thanking the Sun for rising in the morning, knowing that it means we've lived through another night, another Winter, another year.

I Love this night more than any other.

Good Yule to all.  May you wake tomorrow, warm, and Loved.



        Sunna sinks down    into the dark sea;
        wolf and wind howl    outside the walls.
        Now Holda shakes    out her snowy bed;
        now are life-fires    hid in yew-night.
        From Thrymheim Skadhi,    shadow-black, skis.
        Odhinn’s gray steed    leads ghosts on the wind.
        Trolls fare from cliff-halls,    harry from rock-caves;
        the etins arising    from ice and stone.
        Ye who would watch    this night, ward ye well!

        Sunna sinks down    into the dark sea.
        But Gullinbursti    gleams bright in the hall.
        Well are we warded    who watch this night;
        by boar tusk’s thrusting,    by Thor’s strength.
        In this high hall    stand all holy kin,
        from sib-roots to branches    runs hidden fire.
        Thor’s stark hammer    this hall has hallowed,
        Alfs and idises    the dark and light kin,
        Fro Ing and Freyja    share now frith and might!

        We kindle the yew-flame to year’s Yule-night!
       
        Now feast in highest    and hallowed frith.
        Our joy to Gods    we give this night,
        that while worlds sleep    they wax in main
        from midnight growing    ever greater towards dawn.


        *     *    *        *     *    *        *     *    *

        Now Odhinn rides    in the Wild Hunt,
        leading the ghosts,    gray, down the wind.
        Our oldest hold    in howe-mounds high,
        from Bairn-Stock’s roots    rise kin this night.
        Well do we know    the Wanderer old;
        eldest, the father    of Ase and man,
        wisest of kin        Odhinn, we hail thee!

        Wisdom rising    from Well’s deep roots,
        Runes of might    roar in the mead,
        up from the Bairn-Stock’s    eldest roots.
        Our kin who have fared    forth, come to us!
        We drink with you, hallowing    draught to the Gods!

        Hail to Odhinn    wisdom’s drighten!
        Sig in our strifes    send this year.

        Hail to Thor        Thurses’ Bane!
        In your might     and main we trust.

        Hail Fro Ing        frith’s mighty God!
        High be the     harvest this year!

        Hail to Njordhr    with holy drink!
        Winds blow well    to us this year!

        Hail to the alfs    all ringed around us,
            the fathers of our folk.

        Hail the Disir        all ringed around us,
            the mothers of our might.

        Hail our kin        in hidden lands.
            Hail the Yule-wights high!


        *     *    *        *     *    *        *     *    *

        Our Yule-glow    that gleamed all night,
            now kindles the keen fire.
        Sunna’s flame    flares bright again,
            upon the heavens’ hearth.

        Sunna’s fire    flares bright again,
            the darkest night is done,
            the holy gifts are given.

        Hail the Gods and the Goddesses!  Hail the Yule morn!

Mother's Night...

Tonight is Mother's Night.  The first night of Yule.

As I ranted yesterday, I celebrate the secular, American holiday of Xmas, rather than the Christian holiday of Christmas.  However, I do also celebrate a religious or spiritual version of the Winter holiday, as well.

For the last twelve years, I have celebrated the pre-Christian Winter holy days of Yule, which begin tonight at sundown, and last until sunrise on January 1st.

As a child, Christmas never felt like just the 24th and 25th to me.  I always felt like it lasted much longer than that.  It felt like it started sometime the week before (both of my parents' birthdays are the week before Christmas, which probably had a little something to do with that - more on that later), and it felt like it ended with New Year's.  It felt like a multi-day event, with the 24th and 25th as the central climax of the whole thing.  It always felt that way, as far back as I can remember, and I celebrated it that way.  I could feel the magick of the holiday begin sometime the week before, and I would always make my parents keep the lights up and lit until New Year's; it didn't feel right to turn them off on the 26th.  That just felt like too abrupt and sudden of an ending to everything.  It didn't feel right.

As a young adult, as part of my exploration of various magickal disciplines, I discovered the pre-Christian pagan traditions of the Northern European cultures.  The gods of the Vikings - Odin, Loki, and Thor, among many others.  I found myself drawn to these traditions; something about them resonated with me, and I began to adopt them as the first religion I had ever chosen to practice.  And no part of this tradition resonated with me more than their Winter holy days of Yule.

I spent many years working within this tradition as one of my primary spiritual practices.  Over the years, I've let go of all of it, as I've grown and moved on.  All except for Yule.  As with Taoism, when I discovered Yule, I realized that I had been celebrating it my entire life, and simply never knew it.  Instantly, it felt right to me.  No matter what other spiritual paths may come and go in my life, I know that I will always celebrate Yule.

In the pagan calendar, Yule is a very magickal time.  In fact, it is a period out of time.  The darkest, coldest time of the year.  A time to gather the entire family together under one roof, and keep safe and warm by a huge fire, to hold back the cold and the dark.  They believed that time stopped at sundown tonight, and started again on sunrise of January 1st (though they didn't call it "January," obviously).  In the interim, was Yule, when the material world and the spiritual world are one and the same, and the spirits of our ancestors and family who have passed on return to us, and we are free to enter their world, as well.  Other spirits, malevolent spirits, are also free to roam our world during this time-out-of-time.  The height of Winter was the most deadly time for the ancient pagans of the North, and they heard frost-giants and dreadful monsters in the howling winds of snowstorms.  Someone who ventured out of the hall, away from the group, away from the hearth-fire, may not come back.  Did they succumb to the cold and the dark and the storms?  Or was it something else?

Most of our "Christmas" traditions come from the celebration of Yule.  When the Christians converted the Northern Europeans, they couldn't get them to stop celebrating Yule, even under penalty of death.  And so instead, they moved the celebration of the birth of their god Jesus from mid- to late-Autumn, up to December 25th - right in the middle of Yule.  And they adopted the traditional Yuletide celebrations into the celebration of their Mass of Christ.

The christmas tree is a pagan tradition.  The yule log.  The wreath.  Mistletoe.  The New Year beginning one week after December 25th.  Leaving gifts in socks that are drying by the fire.  All originally pagan traditions.  Yule, from December 20th through December 31st, is where we get the idea of the "12 days of christmas."

All the parts of xmas that I liked the most - all the non-Jesus parts - turned out to be from this pre-cursor holiday of Yule.  And it covers the entire period of the calendar, from beginning to end, that always felt like the "real" Christmas holiday to me.  It leads up to the climax of the season with Xmas right in the middle, and then winds down to Twelfth Night (New Year's) at the end.  It is perfectly balanced.

Christmas was, by far, my mother's favorite holiday.  And I get my sincere love and appreciation of this season from her.  She was born on December 20th, which turns out to be the first night of Yule, and is traditionally celebrated as "Mother's Night."  It is the night to celebrate all the Mothers in our life, both living and dead, and all the good they've done us, and all they've sacrificed in order for us to be here, right now.

My mother died on December 31st.  She took her own life, in part, to spare us, her family, from having to suffer through her slow and inevitable decline into madness and agonizing death.  She sacrificed herself for us.  She was born on the first night of Yule, Mother's Night, and she died on the last night of Yule, Twelfth Night, the very year that I first came to know about this tradition.  I never got to tell her about Yule, or Mother's Night.

Yule, her favorite holiday, though she never knew it, is a time when our homes are open to the spirits of all those dead that we have loved.  And so every December 20th, I invite her into my home, and I pour her a drink, and I thank her for the life she gave me.

It just feels right.

It always has.



        Disir, I call,        ur-mothers dear,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, I call,         frith-weaver wise,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, I call,        holy and bright,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.


        Hallowed women of the home,
            I raise this horn to you.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, riding forth this night,
            Look kindly on our home.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Disir, wights of the wheel,
            Spin us good wyrds to come.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, who winds the distaff full,
            Fill our house with joy.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.

Xmas...

I've been listening to christmas music at work all week now, and I'm done with my shopping for the season, and it's the day before Yule begins, and I'm all in the spirit of the holy-days, so it's probably time I got this explanation down and out.  And if the news media is to be believed (and they aren't), then consider this my volley in the fabled War on Christmas.

I am not a Christian, and so I don't celebrate Christmas, as in "The Mass of Jesus Christ."  I don't celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ anymore than I celebrate the birth of Siddhartha Buddha.  (Although I find it a truly beautiful story.  Honest-to-Sol, I am moved to tears every single year by the song "The Little Drummer Boy.")

But even though I am no longer a Christian, I was raised as an orthodox Christian, and so have a resonant familiarity with the customs, and am also not part of a competing Judeo-Christian culture; so, Christmas is certainly an option for me.

But, more importantly, I am an American.  And, as an American, I choose to celebrate the capitalist American Winter holiday of Xmas.

Like it or not (and I see no reason to not like it, unless you somehow have your ego wrapped up in making sure everybody holds the same religious beliefs that you do), the Christian holy day of Christmas has, over the generations of cultural domination by Christians, created another, entirely separate, and entirely secular holiday in this country, that has absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.  This holiday, that I refer to as "Xmas" just to differentiate between the two, is about Santa and Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman and Black Friday and strings of lights hanging everywhere and chopping down an evergreen and sticking it in your living room.  And I throw myself into this holiday whole-heartedly.  It is, hands-down, my absolute favorite time of the year.  I Love it.  And I wish we could all just accept that this holiday exists, and that it doesn't all have to be about Jesus, and thereby give all Americans the opportunity to enjoy it, regardless of their religion, or lack thereof.

And if you want to celebrate a traditional Christian Christmas, and make it all about the birth of baby Jesus, then please, by all means, go right ahead.  No one is stopping you.  But you need to accept that you gave this holiday away a long time ago, and that it doesn't belong solely to you anymore.  There is a world economy running off of this holiday now, and it has fuck-all to do with Jesus.  The engine of the capitalist world runs on the secular holiday of Xmas, and the sooner we all admit that, and accept it, and stop whining about it as though it were the greatest crime since the crucifixion, and as though we could do anything about it, the better off we'll all be.

Here endeth the rant.

Merry Xmas, everyone.

On Creating...

I've never read Bukowski.

So, naturally, I was surprised to discover that he'd already said this long before me, and probably better than I ever could.

Surprise Morning...

NOTE:  I thought I had posted this on Friday, but my home internet connection has been buggy lately (as usual, really), and I guess something must've gone wrong, because I just noticed today that this post wasn't actually on the blog.  Everything seemed to go fine when I posted it, there were no signs of problems, but there it was this morning, still marked as "Draft."  So, anyways, here it is now, a few days late.

+     +     +

One exit away from work this morning, there was a loud BANG! from my engine, and smoke started pouring out from under my car.  (It's so weird, it seems like every time I've broken down in the last 5 years, I've been one exit away from my work, in this same spot.)  I pulled over to the side of the road, got out to look under the hood, and saw oil just pouring out from the underside of my car and pooling all over the road.

Wonderful.

Called AAA, and had them send out a tow-truck.  Got to spend a thrilling hour on the shoulder of 270 waiting for the truck to arrive, praying not to get plowed into by a fellow commuter doing 80mph in an Escalade.  The tow-truck finally showed up and gave me a lift back to the dealership, thirty miles away, dragging my poor, broken car behind.  Along the way, the greasy, 300 lbs. driver regaled me with tales of all the 19- and 20-year old "hippie chicks" he's "banging" right now.

This car is only a little over a year old.  It's still under warranty.  (Thankfully.)  And I just brought it in for maintenance a couple of weeks ago, just before our Thanksgiving trip to Pittsburgh.  So this shouldn't have happened.

Turns out that when they changed my oil back then, they didn't put the oil plug back into the oil pan properly.  As I've been driving it since then, the plug has been slowly working its way out.  The explosion I heard this morning was the plug shooting out of the oil pan like a bullet.

Luckily, an easy fix.  Just get a new plug, and fill the thing back up with oil.  And a free fix, too.  Still, though - not the way I would've preferred to spend my day.

But a useful reminder that we can never get complacent, because despite our assumptions, we can never really know what's going to happen to us next.

By Jove...

I saw Jupiter for the first time recently.

My old elementary school, that I happen to live just a few blocks away from now, has a pretty famous science center attached to it, called the Earth and Space Science Lab.  When I was a kid, they had the only planetarium in the state.  Now they've moved to their own building on campus, that feels almost as big as the rest of the school all by itself, and they've added an observatory, among other educational attractions.  They have shows at the planetarium on a fairly regular basis, and they're cheap, and I'm into astronomy, and it's only a couple blocks from my house, so I sometimes go to these shows, even though the median age in the room is usually about nine.

I don't know what the fuck I expected - it's an elementary school, for fuck's sake.  But, for some reason, I assumed that the shows they put on outside of school hours would attract an older crowd, or at least feature content aimed above a fifth-grade level.  And when I went to my first show, and realized I was the only adult there who hadn't brought a child with them, I felt, once again, like a complete fucking weirdo.  And the whole time, I felt like all the parents were looking at me sideways, like I was standing outside a windowless white van in a clown costume with one hand full of balloons and the other full of roofies.  It was mortifying.  But then I thought, fuck them, I'm hear for the Science!  Then the show turned out to contain about as much educational science information as an episode of Ancient Aliens, and I was back to feeling like the clown with the van and the collection of baby teeth again.  But, still, I continue to go to these things.  I think just because I still geek out about being in the planetarium, just like I did when I was in school there.  And so I still have fun, even if I don't learn very much; and I try to ignore the parents, and their screaming kids.

Anyways, I enjoy it so much (despite myself) that I decided to volunteer there.  They're always advertising that they need volunteers, and it's so nearby, and I could convince myself I was doing a good deed, and it beats washing dishes at the soup kitchen across the street.  Plus, I thought it'd be a good way to get to see the shows without having to buy a ticket.  (It's not like I'm a cheapskate or anything; tickets are only $5.  It's just that their process for purchasing tickets was a bit of a wonky pain-in-the-ass, and I thought it'd be better to do it this way, by doing a good deed, and earning my way into the show, rather than just handing over $5.  And also, not for nothing, but now I don't have to feel like Beelzebozo the Hellclown anymore, because I'm not just the creepy guy hanging out by himself with all the families and children - I work there, so it's okay.)

And it turns out that my favorite perk of volunteering there, is that I get to go out to the observatory and look through their incredibly powerful telescope.

Jupiter has been plainly visible to the naked eye for a couple of months now.  (It's nearly impossible to miss - it's the brightest object in the night sky that isn't the Moon.)  And, as is usually the case during these times when it is visible, I've often found myself standing outside, staring up at it.  This image of Jupiter as a bright, white point in the night sky is therefore very familiar to me.  I often wonder at just how huge that object must be, to be that far away and still be that bright!  (Answer:  Jupiter is the 2nd most massive object in the solar system, next to the Sun.  In fact, if you took every other object in the solar system - every planet, every comet, every asteroid, every Kuiper Belt object - and crushed them all together into one giant ball of stuff, that giant ball would still be less massive than Jupiter!  It is literally more massive than the rest of the solar system, combined.  That is fucking HUGE.)  And I've seen countless pictures of Jupiter before.  We all have.  The various colored layers of swirling gas, the giant red spot.  It's an iconic image.

But this time was different.

I was working in Critter Cove, explaining the weird lives of sea urchins and brittle starfish to six-year-old's, when an intern came in and told me that they had the observatory trained on Jupiter.  I almost dropped the urchin I'd been holding.  Seeing my reaction, the intern laughed and told me that she'd mind the exhibits while I ran out to have a look.  I tried not to knock down any children on my way out of the building, but looking back, I can't guarantee to a certainty that I succeeded in that endeavor.

Shivering in the cold, I leaned into the eyepiece, and saw Jupiter, really saw it, for the first time.

It was as big as a half-dollar.  And I could see all of the stripes of layered gas swirling across it.  (The red spot was apparently on the far side, out of view.)  I could see the four Galilean moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - lined up in a perfectly straight line to the right of it, on Jupiter's orbital plane.  It was a bit blurry, but still, there was no mistaking it:  that was clearly Jupiter.  And not just an image of Jupiter, but the real thing!  Live and in-person!  I was seeing it, for real, as it was right then, in real-time!  (Or, at least, as it was about forty minutes earlier.  As I said, it's really far away, and so it takes the light a while to reach us.  Which only made the fact that it was the size of a half-dollar and that I could make out so much detail as to actually see each individual layered stripe just that much more impressive!)

It was like meeting a celebrity in-person; you're so intimately familiar with them as this 2-D image inside the box in your living room, that when you suddenly find yourself face-to-face with them as a living, three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood person, there's this strange disconnect in your brain, and things feel just slightly un-real.  And that's how I felt peering through that telescope at the 40-minute-old sight of the greatest planet in our system, the planet that more than any other outside of our own is responsible for our existence.  (Without Jupiter's massive gravity-well situated smack-dab in the middle of the solar system, Earth would be constantly bombarded by comets and asteroids, making it a relatively unstable environment, and therefore a very unlikely place for life to have been able to evolve.)

I lifted my head away from the telescope, and looked out the hole in the roof at the bright point of light in the sky that I had always believed was Jupiter.  I had believed that because the Astronomers told me that was the case, and I chose to believe them; I had no reason not to.  But now, I could see the telescope pointed straight at that point of light.  And I looked back through the eyepiece, and I could see it, plain-as-day, in all of its massive, iconic glory, spinning there in outer space.  It was real.  From that moment on, it was real to me.

Before, I had only believed in Jupiter.  But now I knew it.

Because I had seen it with my own eyes.

Mr. Chairman...

Busy, busy day, and I know now that I will not have any time to craft a post.  So, on the occasion of what would've been his ninety-seventh birthday, I'll simply leave you with this:

Sorry...

I got nothin' and it's late and I'm hungry and I'm tired and I wanna go home.

Put that in yer fuckin' book.

Jesus, Bill...

Don't "Jesus, Bill," me, motherfucker.  I don't wanna hear it.  I don't have time for your shit.  I'm tired and I wanna go home.

Why are you being so hostile?

I'm not being hostile!  I'm tired and I wanna go home!

So, go, then!  Get on with it already!  No one is holding you here.  Leave!  But stop bitching about it, you whiny little baby.

Fine, then!  I don't need you to tell me to go.  I'll go when I'm ready to go.  I don't need you anyway.

Ya big baby.

+     +     +

Wow.  That was productive.

You're welcome, by the way, for that worthless little creative turd I just shit out into your computer.  I'm sure you're the better for it now, as am I.

Ugh.  I need a shower after that.

And I was so proud of what I created yesterday.  I really thought that was worth something.  Following that up with this miserable excuse for "creative output" feels like a monumental failing of a level that calls into question my worth as a human being.  Now I just wanna go home and sit in my empty bathtub and masturbate into my underwear with my face buried in a tub of ice cream until I pass out in a puddle of my own excrement and shame.  Or maybe I'll just get McDonald's on the way home.

Six of one, really...

Vibrations...

My brain buzzes and my fingers dance.
My eyes twitch and dart to make the world vibrate.
Too much coffee and my heart slows down to one,
long,
drawn-out
thuwump.
I feel the fibers in my muscles coil like a snake.
I'm all adrenaline and nothing to do.
No fight to be had,
no flight to be made,
no harm,
nor foul,
nor fuck to be given.
Wires pulled taut,
I could strike out a tune,
make the bones dance
a crackhead jig.
Long breaths in staccato time,
high on the oh-2 painting my brain red.
I can feel my whiskers like an aura,
hovering over my skin,
every hair a bright,
electric
nerve.
Throb, pulse, twitch.
Writhe, dance, squirm.
Eyes-wide,
drink it in,
eat the lightwave whole.
Bits and bits and bits
stab,
pierce,
prick,
puncture,
penetrate,
explode
into image,
view,
vista,
site,
sight,
seen,
scene.
It's all the same.
All light
and heat
and motion,
no differentiation,
no line of demarcation,
no distinction,
no more,
no me.

One more cup,
and I'll be gone.

Rebuttal...

I'm done my work and my shopping for the day, and so, again, it is time to write.  And so again I run blindly face-first into the brick wall of Write what?!

Oh, Blank Page, why do you tease me so?

Because I hate you.

Oh!  Oh, I see.

No, wait, I don't see.  Why the fuck do you hate me?!  What did I do to you??

You destroyed me.  You do destroy me.   Over and over, day after day, you destroy me.  Worse, you delight in destroying me!  You take solace from it, you derive joy from it, it excites you.  You destroy me, and you call it "expression."

My murder is your art.

That's a little hyperbolic, don't you think?

Says the serial killer to his shrieking victim.

Hey now, let's just calm down here, okay?  Alright, so, yeah, maybe I do destroy you repeatedly, day-in and day-out.  But it can't possibly be as big of a deal as you're making it out to be.  Because clearly, even though I destroy you, you persist.  Because every day, there you are again, waiting for me, tormenting me, taunting me, teasing me with your emptiness, begging to be filled.  Destroyed you may rightly claim, but also clearly, reborn.  Refreshed.  Renewed.  Rejuvenated.  Resuscitated.  Revived.  Resurrected. 

You cry "Death!"??  You, Immortal, dare scream, "Murder!"??

Don't make me laugh.

You'll wring no quarter nor comfort from me with your empty, pitiful wails.  I name you "Tormentor!"  "Enemy!"  "Foe!"  "Nemesis!" 

I will laugh and dance and weep tears of righteous joy as I watch you burn beneath my words, and I will bathe myself in your ashes.

A-mn.

The Pile...

Every year, my family "complains" that I buy them too many gifts for xmas.  That I spend too much money on them.

I've never really understood this, and always assumed that it came from some humble sense of insecurity they felt toward their own gifts-to-give that year.  (Which is ridiculous, of course; I have never felt anything other than overwhelmed by the volume of what we receive from them every year.)

Today, my father emailed me, and asked me, again, as he does every year, to be "modest" in my gift giving this year.  Then he said, "we know your heart is in the right place..."  Which, to me, implies that, however well-intentioned, he thinks I am doing something wrong.  When I confronted him about this, he replied:

Your heart is in the right place – you give…give…then give some more.  That’s what I mean…not wrong, just not necessary for those of us that love you and feel loved by you.  You are the most generous of us all.  Not just with your treasure Michael.  Please don’t be defensive…I love you dearly.

Dad...

I am not generous.  And this is not a sacrifice.

Every Christmas morning as a child, I remember I would come downstairs to find a pile of presents waiting for me, stacked up higher than I was tall.  That pile literally dwarfed me.  Year after year after year.

You held down two to three jobs at a time and went to school in order to provide me with that enormous pile of beautiful junk.  (Because, of course, the contents of the pile didn't matter half so much as the experience of the pile itself.)  You took out loans and lines of credit every year to afford it.  You worked hard, and you sacrificed, and you went into debt in order to give me that humungous mound of christmas treasure.

THAT is generous.  THAT is sacrifice.

I can't give anyone else that experience.  I can't even come close.  But I can try, at least.  I can do my best to give them just a fraction of that feeling of excitement and amazement that I got to grow up with.  Because that's what Christmas is to me.

Every year, I hold back, and only get half of what I want to get, or less.  I have never hurt myself financially, or gone into debt of any kind to buy gifts for my family or my friends.  I always have money left over to put away after I'm done my xmas shopping for the year.  I have never sacrificed to do this.  At least, nothing more than my time.

So, please don't think I'm being generous.  I'm only a pale mimicry of the generosity you raised me with.


ps - And I know it isn't necessary.  "Necessary" isn't the point.  If it was necessary, it wouldn't mean anything.  It is by the very fact of its un-neccesity that it is transubstantiated from a consumerist product, into a treasure that reads, "This is what you mean to me.  I Love you."

Stark Words...

Stressed.

Again.

As always.

Too much work to do, and more coming in all the time; before I can finish one thing, three more have landed on my desk.

And it's the same at home.  I feel over-whelmed and under-supported.  I get a little less sleep every night.  Feel a little more tired every morning.  Each day harder than the one before it.

And it's Repellation Day.

And I would love a drink.

We have some apple moonshine at home right now that I would absolutely fucking murder.

We always have a drink on Repellation Day.  (Of course, until this year, we always had a drink on Thursday, as well, so take that with a pinch of salt.  And a lime wedge.)  And there's something about drinking moonshine on Repellation Day that just feels poetically justified.

Of course, I won't.

I'm going to go home, and do my bills, and stress, and not get enough sleep, the way I'm supposed to.  I'll be a good little monkey.

Because I decided to do this, and I hate giving up, especially at something I know I can do.  I decided to do this, and no matter how miserable I feel, I will only feel worse if I let myself fail.  I won't quit.  And I won't fail.

I won't quit, even though three words keep echoing in my mind, filling me with a hollow dread:


Winter is coming.

'Tis A Mean One...

I started my xmas shopping today.  Feels good to finally get started, even if I am ridiculously late.

Last year, I had most of my shopping done by Dec. 1st, and all of it done well before Yule (the Winter solstice).  It was wonderful.  The best Yule season I've had in my adult life, I think.  I got to just sit back and enjoy it.  I could spend all of my energy on making the holiday more pleasant and fun and enjoyable, because I didn't have to spend it all on the work.  All of the work was done.  I actually got to just relax and enjoy it, for once.

Knowing that I wasn't going to have that experience again this year was actually one of the things that got me down a couple of weeks ago.  I'd been so busy through the late fall that xmas just sorta snuck up on me, and I didn't see it coming until it was already here, and I was already behind in my work.  "What?  It's xmas already?  Wait!  I haven't started yet.  I'm already late?!  Crap!  Last year was so wonderful, and this year is gonna suck now, and I never even had a chance!"  It was just instantly depressing.

But there's some hope left.  (Which seems appropriate, given the spirit of the season.)  It's only December 4th, so I'm still getting a fairly early start, all things considered; just not quite as early as last year.  But I've got some time left, is the point.  And, I don't have as much shopping to do this year, which is going to help.  With Snowflake being unemployed and underemployed for most of this year, we just can't afford to do the amount of shopping that we normally would.  (Just one of the many unexpected brightsides to her unemployment.  Blessing in disguise, that.)

So, I've got less work to do overall, and still a respectable amount of time left to do it.

Looks like this xmas might not be totally grinch'd just yet.

Ramble, Bramble, Blurble...

No idea what to write here today.

So many options, so little time.

I didn't do anything this weekend.  Well, rather, I accomplished a lot, in a digital fantasy world of Revolutionary Colonial America, but that was pretty much all internal.  Externally, I barely moved from the same one spot all weekend.  My thumbs got quite a workout, though.

I felt bad spending my whole weekend jerking-off like that.  But I also had a great time.  This game is so beautiful (Winter in Colonial New York, 1776 - I never want to leave), and endlessly entertaining.  Every time I think I'm starting to figure it out, I find something new that I was completely unaware of.  And I knew that I'm not going to get much time to play it in the next few weeks, getting ready for Yule, and so I wanted to cram in as much as I possibly could before then.  Just like an addict.  "Lemme get high one more time, and then I'll go to the detox center, I promise."

She and I also watched a couple of movies together yesterday; something we don't get to do nearly often enough.  That was good.  And, in a way, productive, because spending time together that way always brings us closer together, especially when we don't do it very often.

We watched True Grit, which we'd never seen before.  As always, an incredible, amazing, basically perfect film from The Coen Brothers.  Literally enjoyed every single second of that movie, no exaggeration.  Highly recommended.

And then we watched a documentary called Dark Days, about a group of homeless people who made homes, and a society, for themselves beneath the subway tunnels of NYC.  Very interesting, and strange, and captivating, and sometimes difficult to watch.

We've been watching a lot of documentaries, lately.  A new thing for us, but I hope it's a trend that continues.  I'm really enjoying it.  Just as entertaining as fictional movies, but more compelling for their truthfulness.  Also educational, which lets me convince myself I'm doing something more worthwhile than just watching a movie.

I think the combination of a fictional story film and a documentary viewed back-to-back is just about a perfect way to spend a few hours together.  They complement each other, and balance each other out, in a very pleasant way.

I hope we do, too.