When It's Time to Go

Here's something that found its way to me in 2010:  Kate Rusby’s "Wild Goose."

I wish I had some manner of power and authority over time and space – a temporal agency of sorts.  I’m inspired by a quote from E. M. Forster:  "I will tell you when it's time to go."

In the waning moments of the 2010, I feel as though I’m mentally unburdening myself from the last twelve months and looking ahead to the next dozen with a tabula rasa.

Paul Valery, the French poet (essayist and critic), once remarked that "a poem is never finished, only abandoned." And I know what the man meant. I know it as a poet, having taken the time to compose a couplet or suss out a stanza -- only to finally leave it convinced I'm unable to find the missing aspect that will improve it and complete it. And I know it as a human, having left moments and deeds unresolved and untitled.

For me resolutions proclaimed for a New Year are merely parlor games, half-hearted mutterings to play along with others. I know many who take their New Year’s resolutions seriously, though. And I applaud it. But, I never have the passion or conviction to hold fast to those things. So, I generally dodge them.

But, I think there is something to this sense of resolution. And, while I can't convince myself that there'll be a list of resolutions checked off as the months are torn from the calendar, I can get behind the idea of seeking completion where I can. Instead of a New Year's resolution, rather a quest to resolve.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate

-- W. H. Auden

...Right Down Santa Claus Lane

You'll probably wanna start track Santa movement around the globe, so ya know when to make sure you are tucked in bed. CLICK HERE.

Camdenshire Crumble Pie

I have zero skills in the kitchen. While I've had some experience with feasting, my preparation of meals usually involves frozen dinners and a microwave -- or a phone call for pizza.

So, when my department decided to have a bake sale as a means to raise funds toward a toy drive during one holiday season, I knew what I had to do. I bought a frozen apple pie and put it in the oven, carefully reviewing the necessary temperature and suggested time.

I placed the completed dessert on the floorboard of my car and drove it to the office, held it with reverence on the elevator, and provided polite courtesy laughter to all the small-talkers in the hallway who offered to "help eat the pie."

Then, while trying to balance the pie and position my ID for the badge reader to enter my office area, the pie tin folded like a taco.

Yep.

The previously inviting, flaky crust was now a crumbled engineering disaster.

While everyone was setting out the results of their late-night labors, I smuggled the pie into my office. How was I going to face everyone? And the answer revealed itself to me in a dastardly vision.

I whipped up a sign to imply that my pie was exotic and unusual and not at all the wreckage of a fumbling dork whose talents in the culinary arts are nil.


Camdenshire Crumble Pie
In smaller writing beneath it, I added the word apple, as though to suggest it came in many varieties.  It was the talk of the bake sale.  I explained that Camdenshire Crumble Pie first appeared in America in communities along the eastern shore of the Hudson River in 1823.

Truest, Immutable Facts

Perhaps the main reason I enjoy reading Susan Orlean's Free Range blog for The New Yorker is her consistent ability to offer commentary on a thought or development -- or sometimes regarding the most fleeting of daily, mundane occurrences -- and capture with complete exactitude the nuances of the human condition. She finds impeccable phrases and modifiers to precisely detail her own humanity (and ours, too).

In a recent entry, Orlean considered the complications of finding our way through the complexities of aging parents and the additional obstacle of geographical separation. There's no 5-step (or 12-step, or 127-step) process that will march you through all the challenging times of your life. You simply must survey your options, listen to advice from wise sources, and make the best decision you can. And, of course, occasionally you'll find that isn't good enough.

Witness:

Sometimes I'm dazzled by how modern and
fabulous we are, and how easy everything can
be for us; that's the gilded glow of technology,
and I marvel at it all the time. And then my mom
will call, and in the course of the conversation
she’ll say something disjointed that disturbs me
and reminds me of her frailty, and then she'll
mention that it's snowing hard in Ohio and I'll
wonder how she's going to get to the grocery
store, and I look at my gadgets and gizmos, and
I realize none of them will help me. If anything
they've filled me with the unreal idea that
everything is possible; that virtual is actual; that
you can delete things you don't like; that you can
find and have whatever it is you want whenever
you want it; but instead I'm learning that the
truest, immutable facts of life are a lot harder and
slower and sometimes sadder, and always mystifying.

Good Will to Men

Here’s a seasonal dichotomy: I don’t like crowds, but I like going to malls at Christmastime.

Of course, I like it best when I don’t really have a lot of purchasing left to do, and I can enjoy the decorations and the busy people in their holiday-themed garb. Ideally, I’ll have some funds in case I spy some perfect thing at some perfect price that I feel I’m destined to give someone as a gift.

The Neiman-Marcus in downtown Dallas takes great care in transforming their window displays at Christmas, as though they were in Manhattan battling Macy’s for shoppers’ attention.

I think this has become sort of a ritual. I’m fortunate my wife and daughters are all on the same page, when it comes to these fun outings that are a reliable part of the Christmas season. And I’m certain my continued affection for this time of year, nurtured by my parents throughout my childhood, owes some measure of gratitude to the steadfast observances we eagerly engage. Our iPods are loaded with Christmas carols, a number of new and classic movies cycle through the DVD player, the decorations go up right after the Thanksgiving. There are symphonies and ballets and all manner of festivity.

And this holiday season we are considering slipping up north of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex to check the dazzling light show at the square in downtown Frisco.

The guy who oversees the spectacle, Jeff Trykoski, is a legend in the area -- and is also one of the featured folks in the book Tinsel, which examines the amped-up holiday antics of some Frisco-area people.

Here's Tryskoski's lovely downtown display, set to music:

The Christmas Coin

December never fails to usher in evidence of merriment.

Eggnog appears in the stores (along with Christmas accoutrements that have been on store shelves since October). Rather quickly and increasingly I discover more and more homes bedecked with lights and other ornamentation.

Many houses are already adorned from the final days of November, but each evening’s commute reveals some new joiner in the parade of lighted icicles draped from eaves and dormers and gables.

Twinkling Christmas trees shine through windows like beacons of celebration lighting the way for family and friends to gather for fellowship and food.



But, the Christmas coin has two sides. It doesn't escape my notice that, for many, the holiday season can be a harbinger of their own misfortunes: reminders of loved ones who’ve died, relationships that have failed, or the overall absence of friends and family, the unexpected unemployment that lingers, the financial disarray, the egregious descent from better times, and inescapable loneliness.

I know those people. I've counted myself among them at times. And each new yuletide I am reminded that I am always a candidate to return to the plight of the downtrodden and the outcast. We are all so-called candidates. I try and remember that when ensconced in good times -- and dismiss the lesser worries as the trappings of the blessed.

Sometimes my preoccupation with affording all the gifts I want to purchase will prevent a more fully invested embrace of all the wonderment and good will the season can bring. Seizing charitable opportunities helps keep my head in the proper disposition.

Stepping Onto Sky

Four years ago, on a Sunday, a brilliant

spring afternoon, I was jogging at Fort

Point, while overhead a woman was,

with difficulty, climbing over the railing

of the Golden Gate Bridge. Holding

down her skirt with one hand, with the

other she waved to a startled spectator

before she stepped onto the sky.

To land like a spilled purse at my feet.

-- Richard Rodriguez, "Late Victorians,"

Harper's Magazine, 1990.

I sometimes get the eerie sensation that I'm on the verge of witnessing someone's personal tragedy -- as though my departures and arrivals will conspire to position me at the right wrong place at the right wrong time.

And I will observe a car crash in an abrupt flourish of violence.

Or I will happen on a homicidal rage resulting in the crack of a handgun's report and the instantaneous tearing of flesh.

Or I will encounter the severely injured after any number of possible acts or accidents had left them unattended and mortally wounded.

It is not a phobia. The only fearful part of it is that I won't make the right decision in the heightened moment.

It's not really an obsession. I mean, I'm not on the lookout because I want to see it. Rather, I'm vigilant because I want to act swiftly when it happens. I want to respond purposefully and judiciously.

Do you ever have vague prescience?