Wednesday, December 31, 2003
According to our Gregorian calendar, a new year is upon us. This whole latter half of December has been strewn with shiny potentials.
I remember standing in my grandmother’s kitchen when the thought first hit me. Aunt Liz and Memaw [“grandmother” to you born and raised north of the Mason Dixon line] had already started on Christmas supper. I don’t know where my mom was that moment on Christmas Eve, maybe rummaging around the pantry for a jar of butter beans or snap peas.
Dad had left for the Hardy’s place before the sun was up; he and uncle Jimmy left in the green GMC truck to bag a white-tail buck, or a doe if time runs short. That year I think my cousin Johnny went with them, so I was left alone with a house full of women. The promise of everything was thick through the place. A tangible joy wafted from the orange record player scratching out Christmas tunes. The 11-year-old me walked into the formal living room and looked at the wispy cedar tree standing above the piles of presents, its thin branches bending under the weight of sequined crusted polystyrene balls. There were a lot of presents in those days, too. I could count on at least four or five from the parents, one each from my sister, Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Don, Aunt Peggies (there were two), and maybe even one or two from the more distant relatives like great aunts (which count even if they were predictably lame. I got a used LCD calculator one year with ball point pen marks on all the numerals. Though one year great aunt Cornie sent a miniature canon pencil sharpener). Add to this a stocking full of great junk like the LifeSaver storybook, an orange, a handful of nuts, and some novelty toys, and you have the recipe for a perfect slow-cooked roast of anticipation, with savory drippings of excitement which make for a delectable giddy gravy.
But that one Christmas eve in the kitchen, surrounded by gabbing women, gingerbread houses bejeweled with candies, and smells of cooking Smithfield ham, I realized that this moment was much better than the actual event could ever be. My entire world crackled with the electricity of anticipation. Tomorrow morning would take forever to come. But the interim hours sustained a joy unique to my calendar. It was still good to see these people again, to hear their thick accents and listen to their gossip. The smells of the steers and the grunts of the black hogs were still fresh in summoning schemas of years past. I had yet to pay my respects to Bernie’s grave, our St. Bernard who had died of heat exhaustion after running all over the yard on a hundred-and-two degree July afternoon. I hadn’t walked the quarter mile to the huge mailbox and or sat in the driver’s seat of the abandoned ’53 Buick beneath the towering bare oaks. We hadn’t sat in the pews of the centuries old Bethel Baptist church or loaded up into Memaw’s grumbling diesel Mercedes for a trip to the A&P. That would all come, along with the doe hanging in the shed, the breakfast scraps tossed over the fence to the hogs, and the searing heat of the blazing woodstove. Now, though, was the time for memories and promise to mingle. Anticipation.
Johnny and I would talk in whispers from our cots. Who could think of sleeping before such an event! “Think it will snow?” I asked. “Maybe,” Johnny said. “I saw Rudolf’s nose once flying over my other grandparents’ house,” he said one year. “Really? Was it even stormy out?”
If the whole family was staying at Memaw and Grandaddy’s, they as good hosts would sleep down in the canning cellar, right beneath their master bedroom. My sister Susie and cousin Cathy would wake them up by jumping off the grandparents’ usual bed onto the wood floors until Memaw hollered up at them that they were awake. After a loud breakfast with plenty of bacon and sour grapefruit, everyone would crowd into that living room (the only time I ever saw it used, by the way, until neighbors called on us after Memaw’s funeral). Paper and thanks would fly back and forth across the room. I would eat the Butterrum LifeSavers first as I unwrapped and my pile of goods grew.
By eleven o’clock it was pretty much over. Some years we would get dressed and join Aunt Liz for Christmas Mass (she, the family’s sole Catholic). Or dad would cart us down bumpy dirt roads to call on aging neighbors who remembered him way back in the days of the Eisenhower administration. Of course there was a huge Christmas dinner, with us kids at the card table just in the next room, but all of this was but a poorly written dénouement for the morning’s exhilaration.
I would catalog my new stuff, going through it all six, seven, twenty times. The best years were when you could use your presents right there and didn’t have to wait until you got home. Like when we hooked up the Atari 2600 to the old TV and I played Asteroids until my eyes were sore. But what do you do with a racquetball racket? Or a 10-speed on gravel roads? If you could play with it, then boredom waited out back for another few hours. If you could only look at it, then it shouldered its way in and throttled you in short order.
I notice in writing this that there isn’t much said of the religious significance of these events. Christmas was about Christ’s birth, of course. Everybody knows that. What else would we be celebrating here? Who was that Lego set from? No, the expectancy was birthed entirely by tinsel and boxes, not a virgin. But then, boredom and disappointment came from the same womb, born when those empty boxes and wrapping paper drifted up as grey ashes from the burning drum.
So now a new year comes around. If there is any genuine anticipation in my soul, it is tempered by daily events and an eschatological dimness. I imagine that I should stand on the cusp of this new year giddy with anticipation. It isn’t as if disappointment and boredom saturate every corner of my existence, but the vision of the new year doesn’t exactly have me standing above a pile of brightly wrapped potentials. I could hope for new computer stuff, or stir my soul with hopes of fishing trips and books to read. Those will usually stir up something. But I know that by the first afternoon of the first day on the Bighorn River, I would sit on a smooth rock and sigh. And it is said, Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
There is another recourse. It is to take up the Shepherds’ glass and look intently:
“Then said the Shepherds one to another, “Let us here show to
the Pilgrims the gates of the Celestial City, if they have skill to look
through our perspective glass.” The Pilgrims then lovingly accepted the
motion: so they had them to the top of a high hill, called Clear, and gave
them their glass to look.
Then they essayed to look, but the remembrance of that last thing that the
Shepherds had shown them, made their hands shake; by means of which
impediment, they could not look steadily through the glass; yet they
thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of the glory of the
place. Then they went away, and sang,
“Thus, by the Shepherds, secrets are revealed,
Which from all other men are kept concealed:
Come to the Shepherds, then, if you would see
Things deep, things hid, and that mysterious be.”
I remember standing in my grandmother’s kitchen when the thought first hit me. Aunt Liz and Memaw [“grandmother” to you born and raised north of the Mason Dixon line] had already started on Christmas supper. I don’t know where my mom was that moment on Christmas Eve, maybe rummaging around the pantry for a jar of butter beans or snap peas.
Dad had left for the Hardy’s place before the sun was up; he and uncle Jimmy left in the green GMC truck to bag a white-tail buck, or a doe if time runs short. That year I think my cousin Johnny went with them, so I was left alone with a house full of women. The promise of everything was thick through the place. A tangible joy wafted from the orange record player scratching out Christmas tunes. The 11-year-old me walked into the formal living room and looked at the wispy cedar tree standing above the piles of presents, its thin branches bending under the weight of sequined crusted polystyrene balls. There were a lot of presents in those days, too. I could count on at least four or five from the parents, one each from my sister, Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Don, Aunt Peggies (there were two), and maybe even one or two from the more distant relatives like great aunts (which count even if they were predictably lame. I got a used LCD calculator one year with ball point pen marks on all the numerals. Though one year great aunt Cornie sent a miniature canon pencil sharpener). Add to this a stocking full of great junk like the LifeSaver storybook, an orange, a handful of nuts, and some novelty toys, and you have the recipe for a perfect slow-cooked roast of anticipation, with savory drippings of excitement which make for a delectable giddy gravy.
But that one Christmas eve in the kitchen, surrounded by gabbing women, gingerbread houses bejeweled with candies, and smells of cooking Smithfield ham, I realized that this moment was much better than the actual event could ever be. My entire world crackled with the electricity of anticipation. Tomorrow morning would take forever to come. But the interim hours sustained a joy unique to my calendar. It was still good to see these people again, to hear their thick accents and listen to their gossip. The smells of the steers and the grunts of the black hogs were still fresh in summoning schemas of years past. I had yet to pay my respects to Bernie’s grave, our St. Bernard who had died of heat exhaustion after running all over the yard on a hundred-and-two degree July afternoon. I hadn’t walked the quarter mile to the huge mailbox and or sat in the driver’s seat of the abandoned ’53 Buick beneath the towering bare oaks. We hadn’t sat in the pews of the centuries old Bethel Baptist church or loaded up into Memaw’s grumbling diesel Mercedes for a trip to the A&P. That would all come, along with the doe hanging in the shed, the breakfast scraps tossed over the fence to the hogs, and the searing heat of the blazing woodstove. Now, though, was the time for memories and promise to mingle. Anticipation.
Johnny and I would talk in whispers from our cots. Who could think of sleeping before such an event! “Think it will snow?” I asked. “Maybe,” Johnny said. “I saw Rudolf’s nose once flying over my other grandparents’ house,” he said one year. “Really? Was it even stormy out?”
If the whole family was staying at Memaw and Grandaddy’s, they as good hosts would sleep down in the canning cellar, right beneath their master bedroom. My sister Susie and cousin Cathy would wake them up by jumping off the grandparents’ usual bed onto the wood floors until Memaw hollered up at them that they were awake. After a loud breakfast with plenty of bacon and sour grapefruit, everyone would crowd into that living room (the only time I ever saw it used, by the way, until neighbors called on us after Memaw’s funeral). Paper and thanks would fly back and forth across the room. I would eat the Butterrum LifeSavers first as I unwrapped and my pile of goods grew.
By eleven o’clock it was pretty much over. Some years we would get dressed and join Aunt Liz for Christmas Mass (she, the family’s sole Catholic). Or dad would cart us down bumpy dirt roads to call on aging neighbors who remembered him way back in the days of the Eisenhower administration. Of course there was a huge Christmas dinner, with us kids at the card table just in the next room, but all of this was but a poorly written dénouement for the morning’s exhilaration.
I would catalog my new stuff, going through it all six, seven, twenty times. The best years were when you could use your presents right there and didn’t have to wait until you got home. Like when we hooked up the Atari 2600 to the old TV and I played Asteroids until my eyes were sore. But what do you do with a racquetball racket? Or a 10-speed on gravel roads? If you could play with it, then boredom waited out back for another few hours. If you could only look at it, then it shouldered its way in and throttled you in short order.
I notice in writing this that there isn’t much said of the religious significance of these events. Christmas was about Christ’s birth, of course. Everybody knows that. What else would we be celebrating here? Who was that Lego set from? No, the expectancy was birthed entirely by tinsel and boxes, not a virgin. But then, boredom and disappointment came from the same womb, born when those empty boxes and wrapping paper drifted up as grey ashes from the burning drum.
So now a new year comes around. If there is any genuine anticipation in my soul, it is tempered by daily events and an eschatological dimness. I imagine that I should stand on the cusp of this new year giddy with anticipation. It isn’t as if disappointment and boredom saturate every corner of my existence, but the vision of the new year doesn’t exactly have me standing above a pile of brightly wrapped potentials. I could hope for new computer stuff, or stir my soul with hopes of fishing trips and books to read. Those will usually stir up something. But I know that by the first afternoon of the first day on the Bighorn River, I would sit on a smooth rock and sigh. And it is said, Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
There is another recourse. It is to take up the Shepherds’ glass and look intently:
“Then said the Shepherds one to another, “Let us here show to
the Pilgrims the gates of the Celestial City, if they have skill to look
through our perspective glass.” The Pilgrims then lovingly accepted the
motion: so they had them to the top of a high hill, called Clear, and gave
them their glass to look.
Then they essayed to look, but the remembrance of that last thing that the
Shepherds had shown them, made their hands shake; by means of which
impediment, they could not look steadily through the glass; yet they
thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of the glory of the
place. Then they went away, and sang,
“Thus, by the Shepherds, secrets are revealed,
Which from all other men are kept concealed:
Come to the Shepherds, then, if you would see
Things deep, things hid, and that mysterious be.”
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Sorry about that absence. I was taken captive by a camel caravan from a truck stop on I-25 just outside of Commerce City. I’m sure you wise reader are well aware of the aphorism, “Never check the teeth of a Cornhusker’s camel,” but I was yet naïve in the ways of this world.
Late on Friday, December 12, I walked through that frigid autumn night toward that truck stop, the one with the 4-story sign shaped like a kettle. My thin sweatshirt put up no resistance against the ravenous north winds, so I steeled my resolve and leaned ever north, falling into the fateful future step by step. Such a journey in this treacherous weather would seem out of the question save for my need to secure a rare gift for my precious bride, an eternal token of my devotion to her: Louis L’Amor books on tape. The best ones can’t be found anywhere but the nation’s oasis’s for the nation’s freight haulers. (On his deathbed, Louis grasped the hand of the attending hospice nurse and made him promise that 35 of his 268 favorite dramatized books on tape would only find their outlet though the 24-hour refuges scattered along this great nation’s arteries). Thus on to the truckstop.
I staggered in, throwing open the front door with a reserve of strength mustered from God knows where, and fell on the coffee counter. Soon I watched a 16oz cappuccino hiss and squirt from the machine, and with this hot, sweet libation defibrillating my soul, I shuffled over to the spinning display of books on tape.
No sooner had I found three promising titles (you can tell the promising ones by the covers. The best books always have the most cowboys on the coolest horses. And maybe a six shooter aimed at the heavens) when a pitiful young woman approached meekly from behind the rack of 2/$1 (1/$.69) candies. Her complexion matched the circus peanuts and sour apple rings.
“Mister, you know anything about dromedaries?” she quietly asked, casting nervous glances back at the cashier. I slowly slid the books on tape behind my back. Did she know that I had providentially procured the last copy of L’Amor’s classic, Rustlin’ Camels on the Sante Fe Tail? “Um. Very little, ma’am. I’m afraid that I have only ever had the opportunity to care for miniature Shetland ponies.” This, of course, was only partly true. After college I spent two summers interning with a company devoted to genetically engineering a more vigorous miniature Shetland pony for use in mountain warfare. One of the chief scientists was convinced that the answer lay in cross-breeding with the Kazak dromedary, famous for its roll in the military successes of Ashwerkahu’s 4th century Buddhist army. I spent weeks caring for the studs after their exhausting (and ultimately futile) attempts at mating.
She saw right through my lie. She grabbed my hand and took me out behind the truck stop, where my wide eyes saw 7 ailing camels. A barn of a man clumsily pushed himself up from the ground. He reeked of cinnamon schnapps. Looking up into his dark bloodshot eyes I tried think of a way of escape, but terror maintained its deathgrip on my throat. “Sho, you know a thang or two about cah-mehhhls, do ya?” he mumbled down into my forehead. “Ol’ Nancy here thanks you know more den yer lettin’ on.” He took another swig from his paper bag. “We needs somebody to take care of dees here camels, and I dohn see nobody else around here.” I spun around, only to find that accursed woman sneering at me from behind a loaded pellet gun. She pumped it three more times and sneered even harder.
I spent the next three weeks nursing those poor creatures back to health. Duane and Nancy had been feeding them nothing but Iams Mature Dromedary Care, neglecting to augment their diets with any pomegranates or candied figs. I had several opportunities to escape, but I knew it would mean the death of those miserable creatures. Besides that, Duane and Nancy had a lot of issues they needed to work out, and my taking care of the herd gave them some much-needed one-on-one time. Nancy was finally able to recognize her crippling attachment problems, as well as her enabling of Duane’s drinking problem. In the end, I left them just outside their hometown of Dalton, weeping in each others arms as their strong herd quietly munched on corn stubble.
That said, I should be free to post a little more often now.
Late on Friday, December 12, I walked through that frigid autumn night toward that truck stop, the one with the 4-story sign shaped like a kettle. My thin sweatshirt put up no resistance against the ravenous north winds, so I steeled my resolve and leaned ever north, falling into the fateful future step by step. Such a journey in this treacherous weather would seem out of the question save for my need to secure a rare gift for my precious bride, an eternal token of my devotion to her: Louis L’Amor books on tape. The best ones can’t be found anywhere but the nation’s oasis’s for the nation’s freight haulers. (On his deathbed, Louis grasped the hand of the attending hospice nurse and made him promise that 35 of his 268 favorite dramatized books on tape would only find their outlet though the 24-hour refuges scattered along this great nation’s arteries). Thus on to the truckstop.
I staggered in, throwing open the front door with a reserve of strength mustered from God knows where, and fell on the coffee counter. Soon I watched a 16oz cappuccino hiss and squirt from the machine, and with this hot, sweet libation defibrillating my soul, I shuffled over to the spinning display of books on tape.
No sooner had I found three promising titles (you can tell the promising ones by the covers. The best books always have the most cowboys on the coolest horses. And maybe a six shooter aimed at the heavens) when a pitiful young woman approached meekly from behind the rack of 2/$1 (1/$.69) candies. Her complexion matched the circus peanuts and sour apple rings.
“Mister, you know anything about dromedaries?” she quietly asked, casting nervous glances back at the cashier. I slowly slid the books on tape behind my back. Did she know that I had providentially procured the last copy of L’Amor’s classic, Rustlin’ Camels on the Sante Fe Tail? “Um. Very little, ma’am. I’m afraid that I have only ever had the opportunity to care for miniature Shetland ponies.” This, of course, was only partly true. After college I spent two summers interning with a company devoted to genetically engineering a more vigorous miniature Shetland pony for use in mountain warfare. One of the chief scientists was convinced that the answer lay in cross-breeding with the Kazak dromedary, famous for its roll in the military successes of Ashwerkahu’s 4th century Buddhist army. I spent weeks caring for the studs after their exhausting (and ultimately futile) attempts at mating.
She saw right through my lie. She grabbed my hand and took me out behind the truck stop, where my wide eyes saw 7 ailing camels. A barn of a man clumsily pushed himself up from the ground. He reeked of cinnamon schnapps. Looking up into his dark bloodshot eyes I tried think of a way of escape, but terror maintained its deathgrip on my throat. “Sho, you know a thang or two about cah-mehhhls, do ya?” he mumbled down into my forehead. “Ol’ Nancy here thanks you know more den yer lettin’ on.” He took another swig from his paper bag. “We needs somebody to take care of dees here camels, and I dohn see nobody else around here.” I spun around, only to find that accursed woman sneering at me from behind a loaded pellet gun. She pumped it three more times and sneered even harder.
I spent the next three weeks nursing those poor creatures back to health. Duane and Nancy had been feeding them nothing but Iams Mature Dromedary Care, neglecting to augment their diets with any pomegranates or candied figs. I had several opportunities to escape, but I knew it would mean the death of those miserable creatures. Besides that, Duane and Nancy had a lot of issues they needed to work out, and my taking care of the herd gave them some much-needed one-on-one time. Nancy was finally able to recognize her crippling attachment problems, as well as her enabling of Duane’s drinking problem. In the end, I left them just outside their hometown of Dalton, weeping in each others arms as their strong herd quietly munched on corn stubble.
That said, I should be free to post a little more often now.
Friday, December 12, 2003
Speaking of Nemo...I took the oldest boy, J., to see the movie at the local cheap theatre. I figured that a nice night out at the movies would make up for us ditching his Boys Brigade hay ride. Sometimes dads are just not in the mood for hay, especially at ten bucks a pop. After the movie, as the credits rolled, I leaned over to him and said, "Y'know,bud, I would swim across the ocean to find you." Without looking up from the rolling names he answered, "Why? It would be a lot faster if you took an airplane. Or a boat." Yes. That is so true. No ocean swimming for this dad.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Two disclaimers which should have come much earlier in the month: First, I was out of town for three days, without any sort of affordable internet access (ie FREE - see post below from Nov. 28). Second, the twins and I were sick with a phlegmy cold. Not a restricted-to-bed sort of sick, but the kind that clouds the brain as it drains the sinuses. We have been back in town for several days, and hot tea and grace have alleviated most of the cold symptoms.
Last weekend we all ended up in Estes Park, Colorado: “We’re more than T-shirt shops and candy apples…but not much more!” The views here put most places on earth to shame, with Rocky Mountain National Park towering to the west. The Big Thompson River is little more than a creek up here, and at this time of year it is a frozen trickle hoarding all its glorious trout beneath crystal shelves of ice. Most of the shops on Main Street are empty even with their enticing ink-jet signs “20% - 40% off!” in the windows.
The plan was to meet up with the folks in Lyons after they picked up my sister and her gaggle at DIA, fresh from Irvine, CA. A lost jacket at the airport (which wasn’t lost after all – just slightly buried in the back of the Caravan) meant Stacy and I had 45 minutes to enjoy the quaint mountain charms of Lyons. We chased the kids around the town’s one tiny market, yelling at them to put back the marshmallows, the Gatorade, the boxes of crackers, ad infinitum. In the end we walked out with $10 worth of snacks: a few granola bars, a bag of Salsa Verde Doritos and some juice. Food from a quaint old grocery comes at a premium. By the time we corralled them the two blocks to the park (passing a very cool looking used book store and an even cooler bamboo flyrod shop), the Lost Jacket contingent arrived.
YMCA of the Rockies is a great place for families. Its sprawling grounds give plenty of room for the young boys to roam (though they spent all unscheduled time on the one decent patch of snow in the shade behind the lodge). There is a barely heated pool, hay rides, playgrounds, a frozen pond for ice-skating, and at least three stoked fireplaces to plop in front of for an evening game of checkers. I discovered something much more important than all of those things though, when it comes to taking trips with families: thick walls in the hotel room. The first night found L. vomiting on me after dinner and screaming through much of the night. N. took it upon himself to take up her lament whenever exhaustion overtook his twin sister. As if worrying about the deadliest flu outbreak in years wasn’t enough, I got to do my worrying in a hotel room flanked by holiday visitors, only one side housing people related to the screaming tots. When morning finally rolled around my mom assured me that she heard nothing more than some faint fussing. L. was in tip-top shape for the rest of the visit while N. succumbed to the virus and staggered around on his chubby bow legs, murmuring “Mama…mama…mama” and very nearly driving my dear bride to chugging down the bottle of Beaujolais-Village we brought for such an event.
One more thing of note: none of the rooms had a single media device in them. No TV, or VCR or even a radio. If you know me at all, you would exclaim something like, “That’s your kind of establishment,” or “Perfect! Time to enjoy the views and quiet conversation.” You will be aghast to learn that I immediately pulled out this laptop and started up Nemo to still the turbid waters of the children’s energies. They were running up and down the halls! They were bouncing on the beds and pulling out all their clothes from the suitcases! Please give my failure no quarter, friends. I succumbed to the numbing ease of video rather than the long fruitful path of human engagement. The stench of failure still sticks even as the TV at home has remained dimmed since we got home. At least I didn’t let them watch anything in our minivan! Not on the way up there, anyway…couldn’t get the inverter to work.
Last weekend we all ended up in Estes Park, Colorado: “We’re more than T-shirt shops and candy apples…but not much more!” The views here put most places on earth to shame, with Rocky Mountain National Park towering to the west. The Big Thompson River is little more than a creek up here, and at this time of year it is a frozen trickle hoarding all its glorious trout beneath crystal shelves of ice. Most of the shops on Main Street are empty even with their enticing ink-jet signs “20% - 40% off!” in the windows.
The plan was to meet up with the folks in Lyons after they picked up my sister and her gaggle at DIA, fresh from Irvine, CA. A lost jacket at the airport (which wasn’t lost after all – just slightly buried in the back of the Caravan) meant Stacy and I had 45 minutes to enjoy the quaint mountain charms of Lyons. We chased the kids around the town’s one tiny market, yelling at them to put back the marshmallows, the Gatorade, the boxes of crackers, ad infinitum. In the end we walked out with $10 worth of snacks: a few granola bars, a bag of Salsa Verde Doritos and some juice. Food from a quaint old grocery comes at a premium. By the time we corralled them the two blocks to the park (passing a very cool looking used book store and an even cooler bamboo flyrod shop), the Lost Jacket contingent arrived.
YMCA of the Rockies is a great place for families. Its sprawling grounds give plenty of room for the young boys to roam (though they spent all unscheduled time on the one decent patch of snow in the shade behind the lodge). There is a barely heated pool, hay rides, playgrounds, a frozen pond for ice-skating, and at least three stoked fireplaces to plop in front of for an evening game of checkers. I discovered something much more important than all of those things though, when it comes to taking trips with families: thick walls in the hotel room. The first night found L. vomiting on me after dinner and screaming through much of the night. N. took it upon himself to take up her lament whenever exhaustion overtook his twin sister. As if worrying about the deadliest flu outbreak in years wasn’t enough, I got to do my worrying in a hotel room flanked by holiday visitors, only one side housing people related to the screaming tots. When morning finally rolled around my mom assured me that she heard nothing more than some faint fussing. L. was in tip-top shape for the rest of the visit while N. succumbed to the virus and staggered around on his chubby bow legs, murmuring “Mama…mama…mama” and very nearly driving my dear bride to chugging down the bottle of Beaujolais-Village we brought for such an event.
One more thing of note: none of the rooms had a single media device in them. No TV, or VCR or even a radio. If you know me at all, you would exclaim something like, “That’s your kind of establishment,” or “Perfect! Time to enjoy the views and quiet conversation.” You will be aghast to learn that I immediately pulled out this laptop and started up Nemo to still the turbid waters of the children’s energies. They were running up and down the halls! They were bouncing on the beds and pulling out all their clothes from the suitcases! Please give my failure no quarter, friends. I succumbed to the numbing ease of video rather than the long fruitful path of human engagement. The stench of failure still sticks even as the TV at home has remained dimmed since we got home. At least I didn’t let them watch anything in our minivan! Not on the way up there, anyway…couldn’t get the inverter to work.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Stacy and I go through this almost every year around this time. She takes great joy in giving thoughtful gifts to family and close friends. I grit my teeth at the purchases, looking past her to the Matrix-rave of purchasing that throbs and grinds at every strip mall and SprawlTarget during this the season of the Christ’s Advent. I am neither a believer nor practitioner in that pagan grotesqueness, and want nothing to do with it…no… That’s not exactly true. That paints me on some high moral ground, frowning and shaking my head with pity at the throng below as I meditate on the Babe in the straw.
In reality, I’m gritting my teeth and visibly shaking on the corner outside the automatic double doors of Some Store. My breath drifts off into the frozen night air, and I watch joyful buyers skipping out to their shiny cars, their fists clutching the colorful bags with raw delight. The shadows barely hide my sunken, stubbled cheeks as my back slides down the rough concrete wall and my trembling hands finger a Visa card. I want to spend. I want shining, beeping things. Things with USB plugs on the end, or things wireless. I want classic accoutrements, laden with image like a humidor or classic movie for my shelf, or another book - two hundred plus pages of new ideas that will more than likely sit unread for months if not years. The Lady of Consumer Confidence is loud and wayward; she has spread her couch with six hour sales, rebates and buy-one-get-ones.
I have not been denying myself of her pleasures much this last year. Whenever I see something I want, I either buy it on the spot or, if it is a more expensive item like a good digital camera, I will research it for a week or two before placing the order. I have DVD’s that I haven’t yet watched (and may never get around to. For Pete’s sake, these discs of entire television show seasons are over 20 hours of TV!). Software is installed and barely used. A big box squats under the carport holding a nice patio set purchased at %50 off for a patio which doesn’t exist. I know the thrill of her purchase, but not any transaction will do. It has to be a Great Deal. You suckers can take your %25 off. I want at least thirty-five. I go online and look for the red letters beneath the prices that will tell me this Book or that DVD is dirt cheap.
She whispers in my ear through the HTML, “Look at that retail price. Lover, I know you are not so stupid as to pay such a price.” I smirk as her fingers run through my hair, knowing she is right and I am no fool. I am a smooth consumer. She won’t get me with her mammoth displays or celebrity friends. But if she lays me gently down on her sweet-smelling sheets, and lets my eyes drink deeply of her form, and stokes my smoldering desires and ego… I am counted among the simple as a young man lacking sense, and the arms of this whore seem to encompass the whole of the world. Then that Visa card slides so easily though the reader. At this moment I cannot remember the face of my True Lover, let alone the warnings and wisdom I have listened to and preached myself for so long…just give me the receipt to sign. Quickly, now.
Stacy gives with a cheerful heart. To her, this time of year is the one time when we can express our joy and love to one another through small tokens. She barely notices the undulating throngs of rave-consumers, let alone envies them. Her year isn’t filled with the loud buzz of constant self-purchases. She can enjoy her glass of Merlot while this rummy struggles not to guzzle any Sterno. Let her buy her gifts and give with a clear conscience while I grind my teeth down at the realization that this culture’s consumer rituals aren’t foreign or strange. Their boisterous carousing merely echoes the refrains of my own secret practices and lusts.
In reality, I’m gritting my teeth and visibly shaking on the corner outside the automatic double doors of Some Store. My breath drifts off into the frozen night air, and I watch joyful buyers skipping out to their shiny cars, their fists clutching the colorful bags with raw delight. The shadows barely hide my sunken, stubbled cheeks as my back slides down the rough concrete wall and my trembling hands finger a Visa card. I want to spend. I want shining, beeping things. Things with USB plugs on the end, or things wireless. I want classic accoutrements, laden with image like a humidor or classic movie for my shelf, or another book - two hundred plus pages of new ideas that will more than likely sit unread for months if not years. The Lady of Consumer Confidence is loud and wayward; she has spread her couch with six hour sales, rebates and buy-one-get-ones.
I have not been denying myself of her pleasures much this last year. Whenever I see something I want, I either buy it on the spot or, if it is a more expensive item like a good digital camera, I will research it for a week or two before placing the order. I have DVD’s that I haven’t yet watched (and may never get around to. For Pete’s sake, these discs of entire television show seasons are over 20 hours of TV!). Software is installed and barely used. A big box squats under the carport holding a nice patio set purchased at %50 off for a patio which doesn’t exist. I know the thrill of her purchase, but not any transaction will do. It has to be a Great Deal. You suckers can take your %25 off. I want at least thirty-five. I go online and look for the red letters beneath the prices that will tell me this Book or that DVD is dirt cheap.
She whispers in my ear through the HTML, “Look at that retail price. Lover, I know you are not so stupid as to pay such a price.” I smirk as her fingers run through my hair, knowing she is right and I am no fool. I am a smooth consumer. She won’t get me with her mammoth displays or celebrity friends. But if she lays me gently down on her sweet-smelling sheets, and lets my eyes drink deeply of her form, and stokes my smoldering desires and ego… I am counted among the simple as a young man lacking sense, and the arms of this whore seem to encompass the whole of the world. Then that Visa card slides so easily though the reader. At this moment I cannot remember the face of my True Lover, let alone the warnings and wisdom I have listened to and preached myself for so long…just give me the receipt to sign. Quickly, now.
Stacy gives with a cheerful heart. To her, this time of year is the one time when we can express our joy and love to one another through small tokens. She barely notices the undulating throngs of rave-consumers, let alone envies them. Her year isn’t filled with the loud buzz of constant self-purchases. She can enjoy her glass of Merlot while this rummy struggles not to guzzle any Sterno. Let her buy her gifts and give with a clear conscience while I grind my teeth down at the realization that this culture’s consumer rituals aren’t foreign or strange. Their boisterous carousing merely echoes the refrains of my own secret practices and lusts.
