When You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

A couple of days ago I finally figured out what you have to do at this time of year. Surrender. Surrender to the holidays. It's not about being Jewish or Christian or Pagan or any other religion, oh no. It's a national holiday as impossible to ignore as Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. Even trying to resist is just plain silly.

You see, I'm democratic by nature (small d, though I'm capital D, too). There are so many people I love. To send greetings to all of them would require a staff of 20 people who would have to work around the clock to get all the cards mailed, gifts wrapped, dates and drinks and dinners arranged. I might even have to hire people to attend some of the dinners and drinks in my place. After all, I'm also working like a dog and there are only 24 hours in a day.

What do I do when faced with this dilemma? I give up, try to hide, try to pretend the holidays aren't really important to me or some such bullshit. I fill my schedule at work to overfull so I don't have the energy to do anything once I get home, except collapse.

For heaven's sake.

So, for the past couple of days I've surrendered to the frenzy. It's better, actually, making cards (most of them not yet mailed), shopping for gifts, trying to get everything wrapped and addressed, as opposed to sitting in my room, sullen and pouting, or oblivious. In fact, I've been having fun in my mini-frenzy. Who could have guessed?

It's clear that I will not be able, as usual, to send holiday greetings to everyone I care about, but I think the truth is that all I have to do is send as many as I can, and trust that the people who don't get a card or gift understand it isn't because I don't love them.

Note to self: Send cards, give gifts. On December 24th, STOP. Then, relax, Reya. Relax! Gosh.

The moon is full and solstice is upon us. Life is good and I am grateful.

Holiday Spirit - MIA

Where is my holiday spirit? It seems to have gone missing this year.

Ordinarily I'm no lover of the Christmas season, a behavioral pattern established during many years of Christmases spent in unhappy situations or alone. Usually I dread the day, the eve, the whole thing. I'm a big scrooge, bah-humbugging whenever possible. Last year I rallied my energy, sent cards, bought presents, even got them mailed off in time to meet the deadline, and though I still felt out of sorts about it, at least I celebrated.

This year? I'm not feeling against Christmas, nor am I feeling in a Christmas mood. I'm completely blank about the upcoming holiday, just around the corner at this point.

I bought some Christmas cards but I have yet to send out more than three or four. I almost bought some gift wrap today but then i remembered that I don't have any gifts to wrap up.

What gives?

Three Random Thoughts

1. "Re-gifting" is an end stage activity of a consumer society. You can still shop till you drop, even though every closet in your house is stuffed to overflowing. It's OK because you don't have to keep anything. You can wrap it nicely and give it away, thereby creating some room for the possibility of more shopping. Wow.

I'm fascinated by shows like Clean House in which the people are so attached to their stuff, and to shopping and buying, that they literally don't have any room left in their homes. The Clean House team comes in, talks them into selling stuff at a yard sale, then fixes up their houses. It's on the Style channel. Highly recommended to students of popular culture as well as those interested in the dirty underbelly of this empire's fall from grace. Right now Clean House is looking for the "messiest home in America." Can you imagine?

All empires end the same way - with a bloated population stuffed to the gills, apathetic, numb, mostly drunk or drugged in some way or another. It was just like this in Rome, too. C'est la vie.

2. A friend asks, Why does Christmas have to be a month long?

I think it used to be shorter. I had one boyfriend during the early 1980's who had nerves of steel. He never even started shopping before Christmas Eve. He loved it. He would go to some big mall, shop all day among the mobs of angry "last minute" shoppers, then spend the evening wrapping presents and decorating the tree. I bet he doesn't do it anymore. This year certain American stores opened at 4:00 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. Four in the morning? That's just wrong. Crazy.

3. Other than a couple of seasonally related trains of thought, I'm below the radar for the duration (till solstice) apparently. OK. Why not?

The End of the Storm

Perhaps the unrelenting Cleveland-style overcast has finally cleared. Brother Wind started howling late in the day, ripping the thick layer of cloud to shreds. It can't have been easy to break the choke hold that the heavy stratus has had on our usually sunny landscape. Thanks Brother Wind!

By sundown all that remained of the clipper were some pretty, pink-flecked clouds that, even as I watched, pulled themselves apart and disappeared, revealing the first quarter moon and even a couple of stars. Nice!

I love weather, but any condition that persists for more than a few days begins to get on my nerves. Fortunately, here in the U.S. midatlantic, just south of the Mason-Dixon line, the weather changes every three days, year round - except - when it doesn't, like this past week. DC's moody weather is one of the main reasons I'm grateful to have landed here in this crazy powerful wounded beautiful city.

A toast to the weather gods, you great thespians. To the Eternal Blue Sky, a deep bow. Gasshos all around, too, for Grandfather Sun, so old now. Onwards and upwards to solstice. I am ready!

Behind the Veil

Doing well, though. I'm in a fine humor, having great dreams in which, for instance, I'm leading a spiral dance or George Clooney is my boyfriend. It's unusual for me to be so quiet. Kind of nice.

Life Beneath the Pervasive Stratus Uniformus

An unrelenting heavy gray overcast has cast a pall over the last few days of solar 2007, quite unusual for DC, even in winter. It's Connecticut weather, but at least without all the grimy leftover snow. I'm not a fan of Connecticut weather, no offense to the Connecticons I know.

Somehow it's just perfect that a serious gloom has settled over the city here in mid-December. It should be gloomy and damp, cold. Even so, or maybe in shamanic alignment with the weather, I feel exhausted, longing to hibernate, wilting away without sunshine, though I know after solstice next week, suddenly I'll be lighter on my feet - in attitude too, even if it's still cloudy and spitting rain. Sometimes turning the wheel of the year is an arduous task.

Eight years ago on December 21st, I arrived in Washington DC, still in shock over the fact that I'd actually left San Francisco behind. In some ways it seems like yesterday, but mostly, that day we zoomed into town after a drive across the country with a our stuff in boxes, stored somewhere, and Jake napping comfortably in the back of the truck, mostly that day seems like a million years ago. Crazy.

What a solstice! Let there be light, please? ... Just a few more days. All is well, I'm hanging in there. Hope you are, too.

Plastered

The fallen leaves, surprised by last week's snow and the subsequent rains, haven't had the opportunity to shrivel up, get dry and crumble before winter like they usually do. Instead they've been mummified by all the cold precipitation, plastered into the pavements. Underfoot, the landscape is a decoupage of the elements, slippery, beautiful and slightly unnerving.

I don't remember a fall like this but I haven't lived here that long. I've definitely seen incredible variations here in the seasons, but nothing like this year, though I'm sure it isn't the first autumn of mummified leaves and leaf ghosts. Surely not.

It's new to me, which is what makes the leaf rot so interesting, and kind of creepy. The sequence goes like this: first they get flattened but are still structurally sound, then pudding-like, then transparent, after which they disappear altogether, leaving behind only ghostly silhouettes, as if they'd been vaporized.

Decay has never been my favorite phase of the cycle of life, but these tableaus, the sidewalks of Capitol Hill in mid-December 2007, are striking, even beautiful. A salute to the leaves, once vibrant, then colorful, now just a memory. May each of us be so graceful at the appointed time. Bravo! L'Chaim!