Stick-in-the-mud
friend or foe?
Hey there, neighbor!
Did you get everything you wanted on the day of “we have an abundance of all things” followed by the day of “um, actually, we need everything because it is on sale”?
I’m in the country where a lighting designer and a lawyer conspire to trap me forever in a Dickensian fairy tale where I am the Scrooge who is presented with more warmth and joy than she is capable of fitting in her heart. (We even sang Alice’s Restaurant on Thanksgiving Day, if that’s not “the Whos Down in Who-Ville,” then dogs named Max are actually reindeer.)
This mixed metaphor is brought to you by the First Day of December, nostalgia, and being in the country, where my thoughts fly unhindered and I keep doing things like seeing a big bobcat and thinking it is a bull mastiff with a doberman head and tufted cat ears — then watching it go into the copse of trees only to chase out a black bear. Then two little bobcats come out of the trees.
This really happened.
I have lost more time to staring at that now-boring copse of trees! (A huge bunny came out of the trees recently and I thought a lot about whether it was a domestic bunny that someone let go - it was truly huge and fluffy, not a hare at all)
Seriously, though, the chill wind ruffles the leftover brown leaves on the sparse oak branches and I snap to attention and stare motionless in case of more bobcats or bears, and the trees do nothing at all and no animals appear. Over and over and over.
I am on high alert for things that do not happen. I need a cup of tea.
And maybe I need to realize that for quite some time, this has been my state of being.
Writing News:
I wish I had some.
Worked a little on this manuscript, a little on that one. Sent out some poems.
How does anyone get ANY writing done in the country?
Random Final Fact:
I thought I was going to tell you about seeing the South Carolina marching band perform live at the Seaport the day before the Thanksgiving Parade, and then driving way out to the country to suddenly recall, amid coffee and cinnamon rolls and bacon and three kinds of breakfast cookies (which are cookies you eat before noon) and fresh-from the oven crispy tater tot/melty-cheese casserole, that the parade was on TV, going into the big fireplace room, turning it on at the exact moment that the same band played for 30 seconds of air time in the rain, but instead I think I’ll take the time to wish you all a marvelous Holiday Season -
End of year can get stressful as people’s hopes rise ever higher, and as each year they are repeatedly disappointed in the exact same way. Why can’t we watch our family dramas with the same amused joy that we re-watch idiotic Holiday TV? Can we not look at Uncle Bob and think “oh here it comes, it’s the part where he sticks his tongue to the flagpole” and have a moment of warm recognition and laughter at the predictability of it all? Must we always be dismayed at the preposterous entertainment that the universe hands us on a plate? Maybe it starts by realizing our own role in the sit-com.
Have a thoughtful Advent … things are changing for the Good.