Falling Meters

My iPhone doesn't do the snow-capped White Mountains justice, especially Mount Washington's peak—the highest in the northeast—at which Lu gazes from the summit of Mt. Rosebrook at Bretton Woods. Even with its upper black diamond and double black diamond runs, designed by Olympian Bode Miller, Bretton Woods seems a gentle mountain, with the sort of terrain that can be easily negotiated by experienced skiers. And I'm thankful for what it offers: a peaceful coast on which to contemplate the beauty of the surrounding mountain range, its glacial cirques and ravines.

Bretton's forgiving terrain is a balm after skiing Cannon Mountain's (where Miller traversed the slopes with his junior ski team) cold and severely pitched trails. Wind gusts at Cannon's summit reached thirty miles per hour muddling visibility in the afternoon. Its long runs became icy turns and twists that were not easily negotiated. But Cannon's steep, lower Front Five, where thighs burned hot on Avalanche, and Paulie's Extension above that, and Zoomer, and the glades—the exhilarating skip through the trees—all of which plunge down to Echo Lake, were, alone, worth the price of the ticket and the freeze that settled into the outer extremities of my body.

And then there was the snow. The glorious snow.

Falling softly and silently.

We are back home now, where the ground is shorn and sepia-steeped, and where I've had the chance to leaf through everything under the Sun, including the Moon, in this year's Old Farmer's Almanac. What I found in the Almanac is that today, this 27th day of February, is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's birthday, a birth date that is shared with sister Backwoods Betty. And I wonder now if what Betty remembers most of Longfellow mirrors my recollection: Father's animated reading of Longfellow's graceful and melodically metered epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha, especially the first few lines of its final canto:

By the shore of Gitche Gumee / By the shining Big-Sea-Water / At the doorway of his wigwam / In the pleasant Summer morning / Hiawatha stood and waited...

This past week, before snaking down the sleeted helix of the mountain, I stood and waited, heard the rhythm of the white mountains and the meters of falling snow, the sound of the crystal drifts across the north woods, the soft crunch of fresh flurries that had gathered beneath my boots.

And Longfellow, from Snow-Flakes, spoke then, too:

Out of the bosom of the Air,

        Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

        Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

                      Silent, and soft, and slow

                      Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

        Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

        In the white countenance confession,

                      The troubled sky reveals

                      The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

        Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

        Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

                      Now whispered and revealed

                      To wood and field.

And then more: A deep breath. The deepest. 

It was all right to go home.

Friday Night Frolic - Winterlust

I was born in a cloud... 

Now I am falling. I want you to catch me.

Look up and you'll see me.You know you can hear me.

The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.

~Kate Bush, Snowflake

It is probably never wise to start a post off with at the risk of..., but, while we're talking about authenticity and, to some degree, baring soul (and as a follow up to this post), I'll risk baring this: I finally—this week, in good ole Beantown—took part in one of the dreaded "oscopies." Not fishing for congratulatory remarks, I'm a big girl (oh, am I?), yes, I am, but sometimes it takes me a while to get around to things. Especially those things I don't like. And fear. Such as balancing my checkbook, cleaning out the refrigerator, and, well, getting poked and prodded.

Wednesday, in Boston, it was a grey morning and a balmy 52 degrees. Dr. Bliss dropped by the holding area to say hello, review my records and recite a litany of complications. I read the paperwork! I wanted to tell him. But I didn't. I let him go on. After all, he is Dr. Bliss. Oh, Dr. Bliss, you're so very kind and attentive. (She thinks, and he is) I'm sure this procedure will be like having a cupcake for breakfast. What, shouldn't everyone start their day with a cupcake? There are certainly no complications with cupcakes. Cupcakes are not complicated. They are sweet and harmless (like you, Dr. Bliss). Lest one chokes on one, of course. But really, how would one choke on a cupcake?

There was a moment, a look between us, I felt for sure he'd read my mind. Look, how could I not be thinking about food? And choking? I hadn't eaten in days (alright, hours), and I was about to be wheeled into the tricked out room for an endoscopy.

After Dr. Bliss fluttered away the nurse returned to check my IV and seize my book. A book, you brought a book to your endoscopic procedure? (She said, in not so many words, after I had refused her magazine offering.) She smiled smugly, and I knew that she had heard my meditation on cupcakes. Moments later I was trundled toward the surgical room, where the hard stuff was administered and where all my worries fell away...

Yesterday, yet another mild day in New England, I spent the better (or worse) part of the day in bed, and then, late afternoon at my desk trying to compose a Frolic. But in my still loopy and confused state, not having altogether shaken off the previous day's midazolam and fentanyl cocktail, all I managed to do was watch video loops of snow falling and winterscape screen savers on YouTube while shaking my daughter's snow globe. Something was wrong.

Maybe it was the narcotics.

Or an obscure compulsion (fueled by narcotics?) to expunge all thoughts of Wednesday's stressful scoping by way of alternate, yet still dreamy, optics.

We have no snow. And in the winter months, it is not the waning sunlight that disturbs my circadian rhythm. It is snow deficiency. This winter, in this bend of Rhode Island, we've seen a total accumulation of a mere half foot of snow, which came to us in a weekend whirl and remained only long enough for my daughter and I to leave a pair of skinny ski tracks along our whitened streets during one afternoon. But it was a glorious afternoon. Outside, everything sang. The snow-covered woodpile, the twisting brittle grape vine (which, no matter how invasive, I will not cut—its summer canopy is simply gorgeous), the birdhouse, the stream beyond, and the shallow woods beyond the stream. It was an avalanche of song, it was shimmerglisten harmony, stellatundra chorus, a sorbet deluge of melody, terrablizza, spangladasha!*  The next day, as temperatures rose and the dang sun blistered, frost began to pool and trickle down storm drains.

How does one find oneself in the wintertime without a snowy foil shading earth's face? (This is not how New England works!) The starkness of undressed trees and woodland and field, at times, seems unbearable. Where are the tracks laid?  There is a crevasse in my soul that longs to be filled, as it rightly should this time of year, with the song of snow.

So what I did, at day's end, at wits end, at the edge of pharmaceutical fuliginousness, was what any decent New England girl would do, I sought the highest counsel: I went to mystical royalty. I went to Kate.

Her eminence, Kate Bush. With her 2011 concept album, 50 Words for Snow—which has been described as "elegantly loony"—she proffers an opulent and moody compilation that conjures what, this season, has become a winter phantom.

From the L.A. Times:

[...] Bush grounds her songs in the permafrost of winter, with her piano work sounding like the first stirrings after a cold snap. “Among Angels” could be the soundtrack for plants stretching toward the new spring sun, but as much as it’s connected to the natural world, the song twinkles with something more ethereal. “I can see angels standing around you,” Bush sings in her windblown soprano, “they shimmer like mirrors in summer.”

Bush's inspiration for the album is rooted in Eskimo lexicon myth: Eskimos have fifty words for snow. But they don't. Bush, nevertheless, brilliantly bangs out her own neologisms de neige in the same seductive voice of yesteryear—her misty highs and lows blanketing the soul with icy wonder dust. 

From NPR:

The opening and closing cuts invoke a chill as they dwell on the ephemeral nature of the life cycle. "Snowflake," which features the choirboy pipes of Bush's 12-year-old son Bertie, gives voice to the melting consciousness of the natural world itself; "Among Angels" reads like the sweetest kind of suicide note. In between there are imagined couplings – with a gender-bending snowman in "Misty," and with a lover found and lost through many reincarnations (and played with brio by Elton John) in "Snowed In At Wheeler Street." The bounding "Wild Man" chases a yeti.

50 Words is an enchanting (if, at times, creepy) collection where each song builds on the other. It contains seven songs only, but their depth and breadth (the longest song is 11:08 minutes, the shortest, 6:48) are stunning. Listen. Worries fall away...

And then, there will be cupcakes, iced, this evening. And tomorrow, for breakfast—should there be any leftovers.

___________________________________________________

* Italicized modifiers courtesy Kate Bush, 50 Words for  Snow.

Slush and Other Stuff

In the publishing world, this is what you would call slush. It came unsolicited and from a less stable source. The sort of precipitation I requested is known as snow. Not slush. What came slickly dressed from the skies yesterday was aspiring snow. Kids' stuff. Which, today, has vaporized like many a child star. 

So much for last Friday's rain, er, snow dance. Maybe if we'd all get together, form two lines (ladies and gents) and stomp... 

Naysayers.

Not so long ago, in 1988, during what the Government declared "the worst drought in fifty years" (affecting two-fifths of the country), a group of farmers from Ohio asked the Rosebud, S.D. Sioux tribesman, Leonard Crow Dog (there should be a Wiki link here), to assist them with their pleas for rain. Crow Dog met the farmers in Clyde, Ohio, and performed a rain/pipe dance, which, it is said, was followed by a crackling in the sky and a niagra of a rainfall. Well, I exaggerate--it was more like a quarter inch or less. Still.

I think I need to get a pipe.

Did anyone else miss Wiki today?

Stomp. Stomp. Puff.

Friday Night Frolic — The Low Anthems of a Dysfunctional Winter

A Scene on the Ice -  Hendrick Avercamp 

No ice
not even snow
on this island
that sits low
by the sea

Ponds long
to be cut
with silver blades
a fishing hut
or a puck

No such luck.

Where has winter gone?

Suburban soliloquists
take trains
stare out windows
at city's winter rains
dreaming of frost

Skis of copious length
on which to mount
a field of firn
to linger, scout
a winterland struck

But fuck.

Where has winter gone?

To the Dutch
they've it all
ice, skates, kolf
snow wonder they stand tall
on glacial ivory

The brilliance
of a Vermeer
Jan Davidsz de Heem's
flowers, oh dear!
Steen's palette instructs

Winter's not amuck!

As it should be:

Swirling, whirling crystal
fleecy drifts severe
white-out hypnotics!
The island's absent pearlescent smear
and Khione's heart despairs

So to Avercamp
the scenes he'd deliver
lustful heads turn
toward his frozen river
away from this muck

What's known as winter yuck.

A dysfunctional winter.

* * *

The north wind blows and brittle branches scratch against the clapboards, yet I don't hear the siren calls of winter. Temperatures have dipped (somewhat), but the blizzards of last year seem merely a dream. How can that be? The last time we Rhode Islanders saw snow around here it was cavorting with fall, just before Halloween. That was the trick. The treat has yet to follow, and I fear my friend snow may not remain as it should: a going concern. 

In a corner of the garage, my cross-country skis sit lonely, and I almost want to curse our pulsating sun that fights the brume for attention. This is not as winter should be. Not here. Not in Lil Rhody!

What we do have, though—even during abnormal winters—throughout the year, is a vibrant music scene, and a history of serving as a launching pad, or at the very least, sowing seeds, for several remarkable bands. Members of the Talking Heads met at RISD. Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lisa Loeb, Duncan Sheik, Jesse Sykes (Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter), and Chris Keating (of Yeasayer) graduated from Brown University. And let's not forget one of my very favorites (especially when he's with his partner, Gillian Welch), David Rawlings, who grew up in the very next town from where I was born and raised.

In Providence, the local music scene includes, among others, The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, Deer Tick, and The Low Anthem:

Ghost Women Blues—as well as other songs from The Low Anthem's most recent release, Smart Flesh—was recorded in an abandoned pasta sauce factory located in Central Falls, RI (home to Stanley's famous burgers), which is, like most places in R.I., barely a stone's throw away from my home. 

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (2009) was recorded on Block Island—in the midst of its deep-freeze winter months. TLA is known for using locally found materials as percussion instruments, as well as its album sleeves and art. (Ah—a dumpster's treasures.) And I wonder what charms they dug up along the bluffs of one of the Last Great Places.

On My Space, TLA describes its music as minimalist, psychedelic and comedy. I think it's beautiful. (Or, wicked awesome, as the locals like to say.) And hope for more treats from them, as a going concern.

Now, please, Khione, bring on the snow!

Cruising With Khione

I don't know why, but I have a distinct feeling something is coded in the snow's weekly plummet to earth. It may be global warming, the shift in climate, or just my wild imagination, but the downfall occurs with such regularity of late that I sense there's more to it. So I got out in it, in search of it's meaning.

The heavy fall began near rush hour this morning, but no school delay was called. Rather than have to make up yet another day lost to snow, school officials opted for an early dismissal. Thus, I had a porthole in which to voyage solo aloft the glistening, fleecy ground cover.

There is something about getting out on my cross country skis, alone, scraping through fresh snow, cutting a trail, that awakens me. There is an immediate peace, an instant sense of becoming one with nature. And even though my trek was along suburban streets, it was still for some time quiet but for the Song Sparrows' trills from across the partly iced-over brook. I wondered if this were not the message—the snow, and the birds, warbling in harmony just for me (skiing the flats has this effect, delusions surface, and I can see crystal clear beyond the horizon)—a dawning of a virginal earth, unstained by human nature.

Until the snow plow hammered past, leaving noxious fume in its path, returning me to Earth present.

(When I return home nearly two hours later, I am to find via research that people have been cross country skiing since prehistoric times—meaning since human beings first appeared on Earth—along the Baltic Shield. That's right, snow has never immobilized Scandinavians. And the repetitive motion of my skis are the same as earliest man's. This makes me feel even more like a snow goddess. Khione. I am she.)

* * *

Presently, I make my way along Rawson, down a small decline, and onto a flat with a certain cadence: a slightly bent leg out front,  the back one in a deeper bend at the knee, dragging behind. I let it linger there until I can glide no more, and then thrust the back leg forward, and the other falls behind. The arms—poles in hand—do what the leg does opposite, and the method is repeated until I reach a soft coast.

I glide past homes where large icicles cling precariously to rooflines, azalia bushes are buried in white fluff, the rims of basketball hoops are salted like margaritas, and a small trampoline looks like a snow cone. I see a "land clearing" sign, and I feel a wisp of sadness.

No one, except for a few cars passing slowly, is on the road but me. I am alone, keeping my own pace, no one to catch up to, no one to wait for. I've got a rhythm going, and it feels good. I feel it's all I really need. But then I see the hill ahead, and my heart rushes. I hurry up the incline, suddenly aware that I want to get to the top. I am in full stretch because I need to get to the top.

Because I need to go down.

And so I reach the crest and circle round, adjusting myself at the top, peering down to the bridge, where I know my downhill coast will come to a halt. I dig my poles into the snow under me, and push off. A joyful scream erupts (I am not even conscious of this) as I careen down the small slope, pass over a stream and arrive atop the bridge, where my stride is broken.

I do this three more times. It is like a drug. A selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitor. 

On my final descent, a car passes and I notice it's a neighbor bringing her daughter home from school. They smile and wave. Another car passes, and it's also a mother and child. I begin to feel guilty for not picking my kids up at school. I begin to wonder if I don't live for my kids. But I don't live for my kids, I realize. Is this a horrible thing to discover? Is this the message? Wait, maybe I'm not thinking straight. I live with my kids. I feed them and clothe them, and give them everything they need. Is this not enough?! Why, I do live for my kids, don't I? I am confused. I begin to think that I mustn't love my kids amply, for if I did, I'd be fetching them at school. I begin to feel less like a goddess, and—gripping my poles—more like something that is horned, tailed, and wields a pitchfork. This is the message, I decide. I need to get off my drugs and return to the real earth. Or perhaps I need a different drug. Something more like Xanax.

I leave the mountain and head toward the flats again. I turn down a side street in Arnold Mills and ski past the pond. More cars drive by. It's odd, but I think that one can tell a lot about a person simply by observing his or her reaction—especially to that of witnessing one skiing on a snow covered street. There is snow. Lots of it. I’m not on blacktop for Heaven's sake. So I can’t help but wonder why some people seem so puzzled. Or annoyed. Or doubtful. While others grin gaily.

And then there is the snow plow and its driver, whom doesn't care much for me. Not at all. Nor I for him. Not at all.

Alas, my son is soon to be jettisoned from a big yellow clunker, so I slide back toward home and wait by the the street corner's snowbank—my journey complete, though no portent had been decoded. Or had it?

At the corner, I greet the little man, who seems no worse for the wear. He doesn't mention the extended ride, or the fact that other children were picked up at school. I wonder if my daughter will feel the same way.

I wonder if I'll be going out for another winter hike when she returns home. I wonder when we shall see the next snowfall.

Demophobia

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Per Murr, I’ve been eating prolific amounts of oatmeal and yogurt on a daily basis, so when my week’s supply ran out today, I had to hoof it to the market before the crowd surged. At 1:00pm, the snow had just begun to fall—the commencement of yet another winter storm—and the great milk and bread rush would, no doubt, soon be in full tilt.

I’m no Chionophobic, quite the contrary, however I loath the inevitable confluence of panic-stricken personages at the grocery, so I don’t ordinarily food shop pre-blizzard. But dammit, I needed more than milk and bread. I needed oatmeal. And yogurt. I had a real emergency.

So there I was at Dave’s, where parking was miraculously still available. It seemed people had actually pre-prepared for this one. How lucky. I tucked my reusable bags under my arm and sashayed (yes, that's right, sashayed—I am a snow goddess, I am Khione herself, lady of mountain gales, I sleep in frozen vapor, ask hubby, he controls the thermostat) my way inside. And while there, at Dave’s, why not throw a few veggies in the cart for good measure? Oh, and the salmon was on sale; as were the blueberries (remarkably!). I was enjoying myself so much that I poured myself a cup of coffee and spent a little time with the cheese.

Over at the deli a small crowd was forming, the ticket dispenser wildly whirling, numbered-pink-paper-slips fluttering to the floor. The market was swelling, and I realized I’d have to pick up my pace before I melted. (Make no mistake; one must execute extreme finesse under such occasion.)

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So, favoring perimeter shopping, I circumvented the deli—it’s much healthier, anyway—and made my way to the picked-clean milk section. All of this, mind you, in a matter of fifteen minutes, or so it seemed. A few yogurts lay sideways in the cold case, and I grabbed the last of them.

I pushed my small cart around the final corner, down the aisle, toward the cash registers, whereupon... to great alarm... there, I did see: an overflowing stream of basket-pushing buggers at check-out.  I began to melt. I did. I was flushed. I tugged at my scarf. I needed to get back out in the frost, in the snow, onto God's white earth. Fhark! I had spent too much time with the cheese! (Which is the very problem to begin with.)

Getty Images

Just then—as I was about to evaporate into an ocean of hysteria—I found a hole. Right there, in the other lane. Other people saw it, too, but no one was making a move. I looked about at agitated shoppers, wondering if jumping in the hole was a good idea. I paused, spied around once more, lowered my head, darted through the line and into the little culvert. I was there, right at the register, and I hadn't even cutoff anyone! Honest. It was as if the stream had parted its rising tide, and waved me through the watershed. Though some shoppers looked at me with envy, none dared cross the divide, and so I felt immediate relief.

Bags were packed tight, and I glided outside—the air so chilly, such solace—sashaying my way back to the chariot, where I gathered the reins, and headed, victoriously, into the valley of glaciers...

...without the oatmeal.

And school is closed tomorrow...

"Friday Night Frolic" - Going Home

It's snowing again, and the wind stirs the crystal confection into dramatic peaks against the sliding glass door, like the thick froth of the steamed milk in my cappuccino, only colder. I don't know why, but all this wintry weather and snow drifting makes me think of the ocean and its undulating waves. Peaceful, calm. Perhaps it's just longing for a warmer atmosphere (even though I do love the winter).

Which brings me to the movie, Local Hero (1983). I don't mean to push soundtracks here—after all it's Friday night, and this is a Frolic, your supposed to be out whooping it up, shaking your derrière—but with this weather keeping me (and the kids) hemmed in at home, movies are on the forefront. There's only so much homework and projects and reading one can do. 

So I return to Local Hero, which is another one of those films in which the soundtrack (Mark Knopfler—need I say more?) outsold the film. The movie's instrumental theme song, Going Home (as well as the other scores), is a stunning, emotional and mellifluous piece of work by Knopfler. In this case, however, the movie is every bit as good as the soundtrack. This film is a favorite of mine, it speaks to humanity in the simplest way. Its premise: big Corporate trying to swallow up small, Scottish coastal town for its own gain. But what follows is extraordinary, in a very ordinary way. Ordinary characters doing ordinary things. With all this ordinariness it may seem not worth your while. But it is. The film is pointed, quirky and endearing. The humor, subtle, dry and wry. And Knopfler's accompanying music makes it hard to keep the eyes dry.

I won't give it all away, in the event you haven't seen it. I'll say only that it's about change, how our experiences—which need not be profound—change and transform us. And it has one of the sweetest bar scenes of all time ("I'll make a good Gordon, Gordon"). I've watched this story often over the years, and each time I discover within it something new.

Here, the profusely charming Victor breaking hearts:

This gem of a move and Knopfler's orchestration are so worth Going Home for.

Austerity And The Art of Writing

There isn't a wisp of wind, and the snow spills briskly to the earth like flour sifted through a sieve; a pearly confection pasting the earth as thickly as the powdered sugar with which my daughter dusts her pancakes. She likes them that way. No maple syrup or jam. Just the sweet powder. Her densely sugared wheat cakes dehydrate so quickly that she has to cut them with a knife, whereas my cakes are sopped extravagantly with syrup, and better eaten with a spoon.

But the snow eventually turns to a steady drizzle, and our street begins to resemble the remains of our breakfast, a path cut clear down the center of the course, and sorrel, gritty granules dredged to the side. A muddy mess of slush and slop, and everyone scraping hard to clean it up.

It's all making me feel a little gloomy. Or maybe that's the lack of sleep. Or maybe it's the fact that I put on an extra ten this morning and I can't budge from my seat. Really, what it is, is that austerity sucks. And because it really, really sucks, I won't be taking a writing class this semester, thereby causing a bit of consternation (how will I stay focused?), and worse, thereby missing an opportunity to take a last workshop with Thomas Cobb—word being that he's retiring from his teaching gig (or is it maybe that I'm retiring from my student gig?). But I don't wish to proliferate or perpetuate rumor. Word being, nothing more.

I've taken a lot of writing workshops, but I have to say, none better than the one taught by the affable and unassuming Dr. Cobb. Aside from the fact that the man is genius, Dr. Cobb gave me a gift that I sorely needed: a little faith in myself. To be clear, I once had faith, but it was long lost on daily grind and housekeeping, on a barren stretch of colorless convention. Dr. Cobb doesn't know this, but with his guidance and kindness, my wayward faith was restored. He taught me about McGuffin, and reminded me to read Carver and  Gardner and Bukowski. Without his encouragement—subtle, at that, I may even have misread it, in fact, perhaps just a jolly delusion—I probably would have buried my little chimera (I've so many), certainly wouldn't have dared to blog (not that I should). I wouldn't have had the courage.

My rock-n-roll-n-trippin fifth grade teacher, Mr Sawyer, was the only other teacher (aside from my father, who also taught English) who ever encouraged me to write, and I never properly thanked him for it. I don't know if he's still alive, or if he's living somewhere in the hills of New York, but a thank you has always been in my heart, Mr. Sawyer.

And while I can, a warm thank you to Dr. Cobb, for helping me clean up my slop, and straighten my spine. Happy travels, or happy whatever-it-is-you-plan-to-do-with-all-that-free-time. Who knows, maybe I'm entirely wrong. Maybe I'm feeling all sad and forlorn for naught, and I'll be seeing you 'round campus whenever I can afford to get my pancake-enriched ass back there. In any event, I'll miss you this semester. I'll be thinking of that class. But I'll keep writing. I'll plod along, I damn well will.

The power of a teacher. They can sure widen, and brighten, the landscape.

"Friday Night Frolic" - I Really Love Christmas

Source

I do. Christmastime. Even in the suburbs.



Even though I'm not here:

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Or here:

Photo credit: Hal Morgan

No matter, I'll soon be here:

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And here:

Painting by Angela McIntosh

But never mind all that. (It's Friday, and Christmas Eve, and this is supposed to be about music, right?)

Christmastime. I love the  pearl-frost flakes floating in the air. I love the caroling and candy canes, the bells and holly, the smell of pine and baked gingerbread, the wassail and whiteness of winter. I love the family gatherings, the exchange of the special (and secret—even Uncle Ricky manages to keep it so) Kris Kringle present each year, and all the festivities the season brings. I love the trips to the Great White North, and then north of there.

And especially the Christmas music, jazz or folk, classical or contemporary, rock or reggae.

But the rock. And by the greatest performer in the greatest rock & roll band. Ever. (This is not disputable.) Especially here—on this soundtrack, which is far superior to the film—with Joss Stone:



Merry Christmas to All.

Christmas Karma

[Source]

If daily life mimics my silent thoughts—my swirling, nonsensical, crazed inner dialog—and the subconscious imprints of my deeper self, then there must be some rather inauspicious energy floating about the landscape on which I  roam. Or shall I say, race? 

A glacial tempest lashes across the icy expanse, chafing my body and soul. And then, things seem to drop from the sky. Like snow. And trees. 

And Santa Claus.

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Yes, Santa: the primum mobile of my inane, rubber-soled run across the permafrost—the weight of the world alongside me—my sweep down the crystalline slippery slope, the inescapable impinging icebergs. Panic swells as I dodge the descending, crimson-suited Kringle, with his threatening Santa claws, and the icy peaks jutting from below. My winter wonderland, replete with holiday hurdles, yuletide yack, mistletoe misgivings, tinseled terror, Noël nightmares. 

[Source]

And why this?... when the Christmas landscape should look like this:

Sparkling evenings, merry chatter and cheer; early morning's snowfall slicing the air. 

Why? Perhaps it has something to do with this familiar tag: Procrastination.

Or the indisputable fact that it all just creeps up too quickly? Though I've had, at least, since Halloween.





If anyone should ask, all I want for Christmas is this:

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