December 2009 Archives
The start of the last day of 2009. I'm sitting in the dining room, looking at the dark Christmas tree and listening to the highway. Got to play around a little with my new camera, today -- make that, yesterday. Took this:
This year has whittled me down. Can't believe it's almost over. Can't believe my Mom is not here. That Amy is not here. Things were a whole lot brighter, this time last year. None of this seems real.
Think I'm going to take out my contacts, get into my pajamas, get drunk, and then burrow deep under my covers and sleep. Gotta have goals, don't you know? Hah.
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"
- Robert H. Schuller
Ethereal and smooth as a kiss: the Cowboy Junkies version of Blue Moon is evaporating into the evening. Outside, vague snowflakes are falling. I am quiet.
The full moon almost always catches my eye. I remember seeing it once, over the ocean. It poured a liquid silver path down the middle of shimmering black. I tried to drink it in. Make it forever.
Rarely, does the moon grow full twice in a month. They call the second one a, "blue moon". Even more rare is a blue moon on New Year's Eve. That only happens every twenty years or so.
The Mavericks are doing the song, now. Dreamy, and western-tinged...
Year Ending is a doorway time. A stepping through. To pass through is to consider that passage, to reflect. New Year's Eve always has that liquid, shifting, shimmering feel. Potential...and passing. Rarity. Anything can happen.
There will be a Blue Moon this New Year's Eve. A transition made even more rare.
Everything is ahead of us. Everything is behind us. How beautiful. How terrifying. We go through so much. I would like to mark this rare passage in some rare way. I have ideas. Mostly dreams, on this Monday evening. Like the remastered Elvis version of the song that is playing.
To press the reset button on a year. Or to just leave it behind. To open new doors -- and to reflect on the rooms we have dwelled within. Hope...and memory. Pain and joy. Life is so frighteningly...full. You'd think that it would surpass us. Overwhelm and reduce us. But I still remember that silver river, set in black.
The Marcels are singing it, now. Brightly. I am open to the once and forever. To swimming through the shine.
What have you done, "once in a blue moon"? What will you?
Having a glass of egg nog. Reminds me of happier times -- and the feel of arms around me. Buying "Scarred" by Johnette Napolitano with an iTunes gift card. Listening. Her voice is like a deep French kiss after a shot of smokey tequila. Pre-tired thinking of tomorrow. It doesn't matter. The Merlot, earlier, reminded me of what it always does. Nice to linger in that sense-image for a while. I have a black fedora, now. Got my alarm clock set for two. It will be good to go flat on the futon. Christmas already seems like it happened about a month ago. I was happy, this time last year. Guess I should sleep. Still thinking of the butterfly dreaming he is a man. Flutter by.
Merry Christmas. I hope you are surrounded by family, friends and happiness -- always. Comfort and joy. Be nice to the ones you love. And enjoy every minute of the best parts. May they last forever for you. Merry Christmas.
I've never felt worse. So much that I loved. So much that I counted on, hoped for. All gone. Everything is reduced. All is fallen. Broken. I am a butterfly dreaming I'm a man. I hope. I'm a butterfly dreaming I'm a man. There is no comfort in this place. The world has poured me out.
I'm empty.
"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."
--- Zhuangzi
Many things feel like dreams to me now.
Solstice. Stepped through the shortest-day doorway to Winter. Felt nothing but cold and peripherally broken down. Wasted the hours; an increasingly common occurrence. Headphoning odd music, now. Just looking forward to lying down and shutting off, again. Feel like I only existed in a tangential way on the first day of Winter. Quiet house. My eyes are sore. The timer has turned off the Christmas tree lights.
I like the way that snow alters sound, remakes the visual. Changes the touch and feel. It turns our words into clouds. Vanishes on our lips. Our tongues too vivid a furnace for it to linger long. It falls in a soft forever...and then, like the poem says, it tightens. Makes ghosts of what we know. It whitens to blank.
How soothing. How terrible. How perfect.
No reason to be awake. So I will sleep. Again.
Streaming Christmas songs via Pandora while writing out cards and getting pointlessly drunk. It's a festive trifecta for me, baby. Woo-hoo!
Cleaning, with intermittent tears. I keep finding remnants of the past. Songs having soft but detectable links are semi-randomly playing through the speakers. I'm stirring dust. Drinking cold cold water. It feels good on cracked lips. Two bags of trash, so far. My back is tired -- the rest of me, too. All the way through. Whatever, and ever.
Continue reading stirring dust.
It is slow and quiet, here. I feel the same. Forty-six years; the first without my Mom. I set up the Christmas village under the tree. No one in the room but me. The minutes feel soft today. Falling slow like snowflakes. The twelfth of the twelfth always seemed to have some sort of mystical symmetry to me. This time, most of that is hidden. I feel worn, partially erased. Thin.
I may read for a bit. Or perhaps just sit, and feel the time in my bones.
This day just turned to vapor around me, and drifted off. Morning sunlight to jet black night. I'm going out tonight with friends. Tomorrow is my birthday. It's time to eat but I'm not hungry. Things just vanish.
Abandoned
Pointless
Wasted
Pointless
Wasted
Well, I Stand Up Next To A Mountain
And I Chop It Down With The Edge Of My Hand
-- Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
It's primarily black outside, punctuated by scattered Christmas lights. Night rain dotting the window glass. I'm ready for bed. My body is tired -- actually all of me is tired. Down to the foundations. So much is missing. This year has poured me out. My Mom died one month ago, today.
Sitting here, reflecting nothing, listening to Hendrix's guitar waver out of my speakers. Tomorrow, and whatever time lies after that, seem like a mountain before me. I need to fill-up somehow...before I start to chop it down.
I love you, Mom.
I miss you so much, Amy.
Pale sky shivered and dusted down. The first noticeable snowfall highlighting branches and blades of grass. My stomach vaguely hurts, shoulder muscles: sore. Seems I'm aching all the time. My eyes are halfway to a nap. Through the window, the sky is the same color as the snow I pressed my finger to, earlier. Gotta rest for a bit.
As soon as forever is through
I'll be over you
-- "I'll Be Over You" - Toto
There were times when my Christmas gift lists were epic. Two pagers. Things that required pre-planing, brainstorming and, occasionally, Christmas Eve panic shopping. Two days of December have almost slipped behind me, already. So I figured I'd start my Christmas shopping today, after work. It's grayly shocking how short my list has become. Forget two hands: I don't even need one full hand to count the people I'm buying for, now. In the past, I have had long wish lists, too. Now, however, most of what I wish for I cannot have. It's a gift to have special people in your life to get Christmas presents for. I knew that in a superficial way before. I'm re-learning it in a deeper way, now.
December, already. My day off swirled down and fell apart. The sunset is a Maxfield Parrish gift that I feel like I am touching with dirty hands. I waste too much. December, already. All that time. The year burning down. I really never thought, at this point last year, that I would be like this, now. Cheers to, Not Knowing. Used to love this month. I don't even know why I'm typing this. Automation. I'm a wind-up doll, walking through the minutes. December, already.
