the pelican

once more with feeling

peace on earth

just love typing those words.

well ok so we’re in the home stretch now.

woke up to a cold and windy sunrise in the darkness spitting bits of gravel and chunks of snow battering tree limbs creaking wind chill factor way below in the bitter levels.

may all without shelter be safe and warm.

npr glorious christmas music on the radio. woke up making tea to that great mozart one. you know that one that shines in some sort of clockwork joy. unto us a son is given unto us a child is born unto us. wonderful. counsellor. dum tee dum tee dum tee tee dum dum dum.

hark the herald angels sing. joy to the world. peace on earth. good will to men.

had a great yule celebration with good friends. one She Who Must Be Obeyed came down from the mountains and graced us with her presence for the great solstice celebration where there was just way too much. too much cheese and cookies and mead and potato biscuits and earrings and shawls and music and silliness. and it was a clear blue sunny ice cold sort of day. we walked like penguins on the ice up the hill towards the golf course to see the sun setting behind the mountains. longs and meeker, god and goddess and the mirror image of the twin sisters below. we feel the presence of someone no longer with us and remember him in great love and fondness. we do readings. we dance. we feast. we go way back through time and living conditions and jobs and friends and events and celebrations and holidays and roommates and we would do anything we would drive across the country in the middle of the night we could show up we would take each other in we would always have a place for each other always a spot always a connection always a sense always always always this love. and oh how the clear bright full moon shone on us on this darkest brightest darkest night.

may everyone feel the warmth and reassurance of good friendship. may everyone know love.

presents are wrapped. need to bag ‘em and stuff ‘em in the car. yes yes yes it is the glut it is the materialism it is the waste the profit the capitalistic crown on the imperial tomb of all that is western civilization the greed the gold the conquest. and yet. and yet well thing is see, thing is see i just love to give presents. yep. secret is out. it’s so uncool so unheard of so commercial so marketable so scrooge after the transformation so irritating to those who can’t be bothered to think of others so unacceptable and yet. love it love it yes i do. i love to spoil the people i love with stuff. of course it doesn’t have to be stuff. as they say it is the thought that counts and ‘tis true i have those thoughts for them and that’s what it is all about. there have been years with very little and others with some abundance. and i like to feel their delight. and it is a great privilege to be able to do that. to share what i have worked and saved for. to give. to spread it around. oh yes it is fleeting yes it is only a moment of happiness it does not endure but it is fun. colorful wrapping paper and curly ribbon and the way everything reflects in the colored lights against the dark window of cold outside.

may everyone have enough. may everyone have enough to give. may everyone take joy in giving. may everyone have enough.

and so today we must journey out into the cold to the family’s house where there will ensue great tearing of papers and ribbons and fanfare of gift blitz followed by yet more feasting and talking and yelling and socializing and family chatter and clatter and banter and debate which will eventually wind down to a second wind of gaming and competition and confrontation and resolution and into the night with nostalgia and stories and arguments over memories and versions and perspectives and politics and religion and eventually some sort of loving compromise where there is much agreeing to disagree about the meaning of life while travel arrangements are made and drivers designated and cars loaded with leftover bread and cake and olives and thanks are expressed over and over and everyone tells each other they love them and it was a great christmas and may we all be here and well again next year.

may everyone make peace within their family. may everyone know forgiveness. may everyone feel gratitude.

makes total sense to me really that this is the time to light a candle in the darkness. this deep into the winter. yeah such a pagan thing a northern european thing maybe a eat up this harvest stuff before it goes off feast time of celebration knowing that january and february are ahead and oh beware beware the ides of march it’s going to a be a while until spring so rejoice rejoice it’s cold and we’re inside and we’re all together and we’ve got some stuff to eat and fire in the stove and blankets and each other.

may everyone feel the warmth in the cold. may everyone help to light the darkness.

oh emotions do run high this time of year. there is too much to do. so many obligations. the crunch the deadlines the social expectations the mandatory celebrations the functions the endless lines the traffic the crowds the car accidents the fender benders the errands the arguments the press the crush the whirl the senseless activity the do it all be it all have it all give it all make it all push it all buy it all find it all wrap it all cook it all clean it all and find the time to be thankful for it all. underlying it there is sense of christmas card happy holidays tv family normal rockwell popeil pocket fisherman frosty the snowman perfection that is supposed to be obtained or maintained or refrained or strained so strained so very very strained.

may everyone have patience. may everyone give each other space. may everyone live and let live and rejoice in life.

doesn’t matter where you are what you do what you believe how you look what you give really really really doesn’t matter doesn’t mean a thing it if it ain’t got that swing it’s a time it’s a season it’s a winter solstice it’s a full moon it’s a bright time in the darkness it’s a moment it’s a feel it’s a magic it’s a celebration.

may everyone have very special holidays.

all my best wishes to you.

peace on earth.


om shanti shanti shanti om.

posted by: limine at 12:29 | link | comments (9) |

shadows

oh it’s been a rather dark new moon this december. and the dark before. very dark.

low energy. seasonal disorder so they say. waning daylight.

go to work in the dark. come home in the dark.

just dark.

and the snow and the cold and the icy roads.

strange bitchy cattiness at work too, of which i have been neither innocent nor exempt.

and it’s one of those years. i tell myself it feels good this year. it’s going to be a special holiday time. i’m ahead on the process. i’m going to make everyone happy. we’re going to have fun. there will be good times had by all.

so it snowed and snowed over the weekend and i decided to do the old traditional cookie extravaganza which hasn’t been done in the last four or five years due to the basic lack of a general need much less desire for sugary wads of carbohydrates. yet i heated up the oven and looked out the steamy windows at the snow and covered myself and the entire kitchen in flour and powdered sugar and red and green sprinkles and i crushed pecans and dusted with cinnamon and listened to the radio and i was making cookies.

but truth be told, despite all best efforts to squirt out festive little sparkly green trees and red poinsettias, the whole blasted cookie endeavor was a messy and half-hearted fiasco. i didn’t even enjoy tasting the dough.

and even though i could view the beauty of the pure white fluffy coating on the trees and the endless dance of the snowflakes throughout the day, i could only feel the cold every time i opened and closed the backdoor for another cat to scoot in and out in three to five minute intervals leaving a muddy buddy trail of wet paw prints through the flour and sugar and crumbs that were accumulating on the kitchen floor.

emptiness. it all seemed so utterly pointless.

forced.

like i was trying to squeeze holiday spirit out of a pastry tube and decorate everything with it until there was happiness.

frustration. sheer and utter. underneath it all some anger. something festering and stewing and gnawing and pacing and chipping away at the veneer of all that is well and good with the world.

in the dark, in the dimness of the narrow viewpoint of personal suffering there were only the flaws to be seen. the dust in the house. the stacks on my desk. the dirty cookie pans. the tracks of mud and snow. a button missing on a blouse. a little zit on my scalp. a sore back. exhaustion. static and bad reception on the radio. cat barf on the carpet.

and so what if today it’s been twenty-five years since my father died. so what. so what. so what.

ah grief. you can deny it and deny it and fold it up neatly and put it away but it’s still there. the longing. the desire for communication and resolution. the histories rewritten and re-remembered and re-woven. mortality.
how brief. how long ago. how far away. how fresh and raw.

and i’m not one to commemorate death. i try to let that kind of day slip by. i don’t want to know about the day john lennon was murdered. i don’t want to think about JFK. i don’t want to know the anniversary of the columbine massacre. i don’t need to be told of pearl habor day or katrina or the bombing of iraq.

because it’s only a day. only a date. don’t hand me that frozen pain on a plate thank you.

i’m trying to cut down.

and yet still here it is. twenty-five years and i’m struck in the shrinking sunlight in the dark and the cold and i can remember it down to the nasty convenience store nachos i had spilled on the carpet that i was staring at when my mother called.

i’d just been there that day.

i’d been there. i went to visit him in the hospital. he’d been in a motorcycle accident in august. hit by a car. blood clots in this leg. in and out of hospital. not feeling well. minor heart attack around thanksgiving. first one without him. back into the hospital and he got pneumonia. and he wasn’t getting better. but none of us really believed he was dying. he was only 51.

yeah he was the captain. the great overlord of the castle. king of all he surveyed. he sat at command control in a swivel chair with the television remote, ashtray, books, beverage, snacks and telephone. if he needed anything, he never hesitated to let us know.

he barked orders. he told jokes. he yelled at the idiot box. he coughed stuff up. he made phone calls. he quoted tom waits and sang along with the clancey brothers and cried when he listened to ella. he threw books. he argued. he criticized. he entertained. he had guests. he commanded the stage. he ruled the roost. he ran the show. he made the reality. he was god he was the devil he was a newspaperman.

and i’d waited for a while to go back to see him. oh he was not a model patient by any stretch. gave the nurses a hard time. refused to eat hospital food. he wanted to smoke and of course they wouldn’t let him. he was angry. he wanted a drink. he was bored. he had contempt for the whole process. thought it all stupid and wasteful and expensive and he was angry and felt that he was being controlled and treated like a child.

it was hard to be around him there. he was sending everyone away. got into an argument with him the last time i’d been there. as i did. as we did. we had a go-round.

and so when i got back that last day, i hadn’t seen him in about a week. mom said he had been moved to intensive care and it wasn’t looking good. i thought she was being melodramatic. but i came down to see him.

i don’t know how his black bushy eyebrow face his red cheeks his eagle sharp eyes this six foot two about two hundred fifty pounds of big man presence and deep resonant pear shaped tone of a voice could look so shriveled and bluish and small and weak.

it was as if he’d been reduced.

and i held his hand and rubbed his temples. he asked me if i was going to go back to school after a semester off. he asked about the newspaper guild strike and if i still had a job. he told me loved me with all of his heart and he fell asleep in my hands.

i went back to my apartment. i said out loud here i am i've dropped out of school i'm eating junk food and i think my father is dying. i think i’m waiting for him to die now. i could still smell the hospital. i got up to call mom and globbed some nasty liquid nacho cheese on the carpet in a jump when the phone i was about to pick up rang in my hand.

she gasped and a sob choked in her throat. she didn’t have to say anything. i told her i’d call his best friend Jack. and i did. and that was that.
and so.

and so and so and so.

someone at work just buried her mom. and someone else has been staying long nights in the hospital while her father has undergone a quadruple bypass.

‘tis the season.

and this morning a client called me first thing. urgent he says. it is urgent. i have to tell you that i’m having these dreams. i can’t do anything. i’m in the dark. everything is crumbling. i’m unable to stop it. i have a vision i have a plan i have ideas but i can do nothing with them. i am paralyzed. it’s all so dark. i am not doing well he says.

he is a head injury. a bad one. a previous injury and the current one. he was once clearly a very high IQ sort of person. a wheeler and dealer. an idea man. a real estate tycoon. and now he lives in a homeless shelter. on good days he tells me about how beautiful the harbor is from his window, and how lucky he’s been to do all the things he’s done in this life. and on bad days, well on bad days it’s very dark.

i tell him to get into the clinic. he says he is not suicidal he just has no desire to live. and i tell him i understand this. i do. he says normally he makes friends and has some good conversations with some of the junkies and some of the staff. but these days he says people are making fun of him. criticizing him. the doctors wrote on one of his reports that he has illusions of grandeur and this cuts him to the quick.

we talk for about a half an hour. he is very needy. he has to know that we are working on his case. his deposition will happen in january. the attorneys will fly out to see him where he is on the west coast. i am gathering the paperwork from his patent attorney regarding his intellectual property projects that he was working on before the accident.

this calms him down. he tells me he’s had years of therapy. he did jungian dream analysis for three years. he wrote plays. he directed them. he has travelled the world. and now the caps have fallen off his front teeth and he looks like homeless man. and he is. and he cries. and i cry too.

i ask him if he meditates and he says he likes to sit in the old catholic church on the corner by the mission where he lives. he says he feels comforted there. he says it has a glow. and i say yes. yes. he says there are candles.

he promises me he will keep his doctor appointments today. he will go in to the clinic.

he tells me he’s going to take the elevator down to the first floor before he jumps and an attorney is pacing outside the door of my office and i’m distracted and it goes completely over my head and he says it’s a joke. it’s a joke. oh i get it. i get it. i see. and we laugh.

merry christmas he says. i’m going to be ok. i just had to tell you this morning about my dreams. it’s over now. i’m awake. it’s getting lighter now. i can see the sunrise.

yes i said. i can too.

posted by: limine at 01:11 | link | comments (10) |

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