Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Manderley Again

There's a type of homesick maudlin romanticism that is built into my DNA.  It is most certainly not a character trait I would choose from a rational standpoint.  But there are some things you don't actually have control over, both strangely and unfortunately.

I dream most vividly when my sons are away.  I can sleep deeply because I do not have a constant vigil to keep. What, you ask, would I do in the case that some oogety boogety  (thanks Helena Bonham Carter's husband for that) man came to my door to snatch my children from me?  I have a plan or two up my sleeve, but I'm not foolish enough to let you (and possibly the boogie man) in on that one.  On Wednesdays I sleep the sleep of a woman who hasn't had a good night's sleep in ages, and doesn't have the weight of the world on her conscience.  And I dream .  Once in a very rare while I dream.  

Last night I dreamed of my mother.  I dreamed of her in vivid technicolor.  I dreamed of her in a way that she has not been remembered since her death in my own dreamscape.  I saw her face, and I heard her voice.  I saw her gray brown hair (not because it had grayed but because it was so far on the ash side of the color spectrum) coifed just the way she liked it in its barely medium bob cut.  I saw her somewhat rimless pink toned glasses.  I heard her inimitable voice.  She was arrayed in her olive and khaki shades with pleats in her pants and breasts in her shirt that I am to this day jealous I didn't inherit. Her voice rumbled out at me in a way that though my recollection of the specific discussion topic is much more dim, the sound and the quality of her voice is oh so clear in my memory of that dream.   

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.  It seemed to me I stood beside the iron gate a while, and I could not enter, for the way was barred to me."

I stood there listening to her, imparting wisdom into my own life's situation, and I could not enter in with her.  I asked her to interact with me, but she couldn't because she was no longer of this world even in the dream space we temporarily shared together.   I waited for her to solve the problem I was having, to reach the person I could not reach, and together we watched the third walk away.  Forever. The profundity of the loss of the other person as they walked away could have been lost on me if not for the unexpected and admittedly unrealistic presence of my quite real and alive mother in the reve scenario. 

I woke up and began my day in the usual way, except for the clawing of my mother's image in my brain.  Her overstated, nearly anachronistic, fur coat draped over her shoulder because it has just been THAT cold this week.  Her steel grey blue eyes barely squinting out over her slits for eyelids through her rose tinted glasses.  Her under made up face that had maintained a complexion and a suppleness any woman her age would have envied.  She slowed me, and called me and looked me straight in the eye and told me exactly what I needed to hear.  She had returned to my life with me and left an imagined dream comfort behind.  Hours later the face of her and the sound of her had completely faded, leaving me feeling the way I usually do about her fourteen years post death.  But while it lasted it was a good dream.

Something Happy

I realized looking back on my blog, that, in keeping with its original charter, I paint a pretty bleak picture of my life.  Only writing about the things I want to get OUT of my head, which tend to be the negative stories.  I've decided that I'll share something terrific with you this time.  Just to show you that I am well aware my life is mostly sweet.

Years ago, back during a time before both my parents died, when in fact they both were very much alive...a time that is hard to believe was ever real...as if it is actually a fantasy made up in my brain to overcompensate for my current 30 something orphan state.  But it was real, they both were alive for all of my formative years. For most of those years our family lived on the south shore of Long Island in a tiny village called Bellport.

We had a ship's bell on our door post to the left of the door as you're facing it from the outside. It was copper with a faint patina and mounted on the portico (it wasn't actually a portico, but it did seem very grand and architectural at the time) via an anchor. It's ringing was how you knew it was time to come home from wherever you were.  You could be down at the bay, skipping rocks across the water, and you'd hear the bell ringing and run home.  You could be climbing trees in the woods, jumping from ever higher branches, daring your body to  break beneath you as you hurtled to the earth, and you'd hear the bell and come running.  You could be playing a game of front lawn kick ball with your siblings and whatever friends and neighborhood kids you'd managed to rope into your madness and that bell would ring and you'd run inside.  You'd run through the rocks away from the water and up the hill, make a left, as you sped onto Wyandotte Lane, as peanut butter breathes (the name for humidity and allergy induced belabored breathing we frequently experienced) burned up your lungs.  You'd cut across the Arcery's lawn and almost step on Rosie, their glorious Irish Setter and run through the split between the great big pine and the blue spruce between our properties over the lawn onto the pebble driveway and take a hard left to head for the steps of the stoop.  Up, four brick steps guarded by half barrels full of impatiens, ring the bell to your left because it was funny and plow through the door, probably slamming it in your wake, which would bring a pretty stern reprimand not to slam doors.

Saturday night was always taco night in our house, ever since mom and dad picked up the tradition from a fellow navy family stationed with them in Hawai'i, although seeing as I wasn't alive it could just as well have been San Diego, or even Beeville, I'm sure someone who knows better will correct me. In addition to being taco night, during the time before the time when everything went insanely wrong, it was also the night when you'd bring your friend of the opposite sex by to be tested and tried-what was dross would be burned away and if anything was worthwhile it would withstand the fire and you would  remain a friend, or more, of the family.

We stood around the kitchen.  Some set the table, properly, of course.  The napkin and fork on the left side of the blueberry LL Bean plates, knife (and spoon if necessary) on the right side of the plate with the cup up at the top of those utensils.  The entire place setting stood atop a blue and cream calico quilted place mat.  The napkin was likely encircled by a papier mache elephant or tiger dad brought home from india one year that had since been gnawed by a german short hair that we kept for only a summer and returned to the gifter, our uncle, after he ate nearly everything in the house and we realized we never asked said uncle for this great gift.  Some fried corn tortillas (are flour tortillas even an option for tacos? I think not). Others diced tomatoes into perfect centimeter cubes and still others shredded lettuce, using a knife, not a food processor.  Usually the guest had the honor of grating the cheese, in part to see how they would react to the inevitable grating of their own knuckles after being instructed to keep going even when only a nub of cheddar remained.  Whoever was in need of punishment diced the onions, to the tune of their own tears, and the weakest link got the pickles.

It was a pretty well rehearsed concert, perfected over decades with a certain harmony that accompanies shared genetics; if you were lucky enough to be invited, you'd better hope you found a way to fit in.  Ten, maybe eleven people squeezed around the table within thirty minutes, and that's when the real test began. Would the would be suitor be observant enough to take a miniscule enough amount of meat so as not to offend the other ten people at the table to expected to have anywhere from six to ten tacos that night despite the fact that only two pounds of ground beef had been cooked and dressed in tomato sauce.  To be fair, it wasn't just suitors, it was close friends, frenemies, and random strangers mom picked up off the street from time to time, as well.  But the testing was mostly for the wanna be boyfriends.

Nervous people are rarely naturally good at math, so the majority of the fellas failed, and gloriously so.  They were summarily reprimanded and drawing back their bloody knuckles never made that mistake again.

We would clean the kitchen with the same precision.  Then retire to the living room for a sweet game of pictionary.  Here's the thing about pictionary, there are certain combinations of sisters in our family that can with a single stroke of the pen communicate a complex several word answer, infuriating everyone else as they watched in disbelief, sure that something nefarious was afoot. After Meghan and I trounced everybody handily, it was usually time for the boy buddy to go home.

He'd be led to the door.  And watched, by the whole family.  Then we'd sing, "Oh goodbyeee, oh don't you cryeee, there's a silver lining in the skyee, fair thee well old friend, until the end, we'll be back another year, so goodbyeee....for it's hard to part we know, and we're far from....a tickled to death to see you go....goodbyeeeee etc..."

If the young man were deemed truly worthy, there would be an encore.  A game of Dr. Tangle, led by mom.  Mom would have us all join hands, in a circle, under the stars, with the moon herself holding court above the brick patio.  Then we would be instructed to cross over to the other side under two clasped hands or twist under our own arm and our partner's or even throw a leg some arms.  Then it would be the job of the outsider to untangle us. Or not.  Or it's just funny to get tangled up with nine other people.  Then we'd have one last chant "one, two, three and a zing, zing, zing."  Followed by some freeform high kicks and raucous dancing.

If you couldn't handle the heat, you got out of the kitchen.  Hilariously, they always came back for more.  I guess mom was a social genius.

At the end of the month you're another year older...

I begin each New Year hurtling, careening, even careering down a dead end street called January with a brick wall at its inevitable end that is perennially my birthday.  If you've known me for any amount of time, or even been reading my blog for a full year, you know the melange of feelings I have over doing 195 down this road as I watch the barrier of getting older draw ever closer to me at an alarming rate.  Despite knowing exactly how this month will end-me in a puddle of blown expectations that I knew better than to indulge-I am compelled to become an optimist about this time of year because as a human at my core I am a creature of habit, and as my orbit makes its close pass around the sun I believe that its bright light will ignite something amazing in my life and somehow I will escape incineration.  Famous last thoughts.  You can't fight physics.

There is a special heaviness to my anticipation this year.  I look in the mirror and I see my formerly eternally youthful face has finally caught up to my years and fairly accurately represents those years.  One of my worst flaws, top three at least, number one at times, is my vanity.  Truthfully, it is borderline narcissism.  I want to be young and beautiful forever and I want everyone to think so.  If you find that this is too much sharing with my outside voice...recall the whole purpose of this project is to put my inner ramblings down on paper-you were forewarned.  You entered at your own risk.  Judas Iscariot in the reflection betrays me and breaks my heart and oh how she sneers at me all the while.  The wrinkles and crinkles from all the years of what I believe a friend of a friend would call unfettered joy no longer fade as the smile does.  The loss of collagen and a genetically low level of elastin leave peaks and valleys permanently etched around my eyes and lips.  I won't even tell you about the things my body is doing to truly disappoint me.  It is sufficient to let you know that I've been chasing an elusive unattainable body ever since I was 14 and my 20 year old self dies a little inside everytime she remembers I never appreciated her.

And that's just the lead blanket that is presently laying over me...There is something deeper and darker catapulting me toward birthday destruction this year.  I have spent three years in a bit of a coma following the epic Christmas of 2010, known in closer circles as that epic Christmas before the Christmas to end all Christmases, or better known in my head as, F--k that I'm outta here Christmas when I finally left my then husband.  Finally.  There's a certain measure of numbness that one swaths herself in whilst walking through a lengthy divorce.  I was deep in it, and looking back...I'd have to say pleasantly so.  Going through the motions has an elegant ease, even a poetry to it that you can only, as is the case with so many things, appreciate in hindsight (ugh so cliche).  The muscle memory carries your numb self through the steps as you accurately navigate your way through your uber mundane life. You do, you don't think, you most blessedly do not feel.

I woke up sometime in the middle of 2013.  I don't know how or when to be precise, probably because it was the narcotic kind of sleep of the chemically dulled - even if those chemicals are naturally produced by your own body in response to your own circumstance.  It takes a long time to wake up from that kind of sleep.  You wake in levels.  Degrees of realization that you are still here and you aren't exactly a robot leftover of the zombie apocalypse that you overestimated the end of your marriage to be.  The problem with waking up is that you are now susceptible to insult from all manner of emotion.  Most recently my insults have come from parents of the students that I teach.

Ideally, we aren't supposed to tell stories outside of school; realistically, I've had a few doozies and while I keep a lot of secrets there are some that I have trouble hiding inside.   This week, I returned to my job to two letters written to the school board whose sole purpose was to castigate me and call for my removal from my job,  without saying it in so many words.  "Prayerfully" and passively dressed up to seem holy and righteous, from two sets of parents who weren't satisfied with the "B" that their students should have been so lucky as to receive.  I can take that, I can deal with that.  You aren't going to please everyone.  These ladies have been tearing me up for the better part of five months, now.  I don't teach.  I teach too much.  I teach too fast.  I am too smart and can't bring it down to the level of ninth graders.  I have not prepared the students to succeed.  I don't care about the students' success.  I want to see them fail.   I refuse to take responsibility for their education.  It is death by a thousand paper cuts.  They sting and annoy at first, but hundreds of insults later and I begin to look like the idiot who deserves these insults.  No rational human being could be so dogged in their insistence that a person needs to be reprimanded, reformed, and fired if necessary, if there weren't some real problems.

I have watched in agony as I am painted into a corner by the cruel brushstrokes of ineptitude and hatred. Slowly and painstakingly removing the facts, and replacing them with a bitter taste of gossip on the lips of influential parents in the swamp like pool that is private education.  The truth about me is that I love education, I don't necessarily think I have the "teacher calling" but education is near and dear to my heart. I want to see students work hard and learn and earn good grades.  I want to see them form good habits that they can bring to college and the work force.  I want smart, talented kids not to make the mistakes of ignorance that I made in my youth. I work hard, for little reward, but reaching just one and drawing out their best can make it all worth while. My disaffection this year stems from the fact that I don't think there is a one of them that truly wants to achieve anything but the minimum which equates to keeping their parents off their backs.

Finally this week these parents in their letters to the school board attacked me to the core of who I am.  One went so far as to say that I lacked the proper ethos to teach at the school where I am employed and implied that I do not embody Christ-like behavior.  Stabbed in the heart.  Not even by Judas.  By a stranger.  You don't even know me.  I would love to show you some NOT christ-like behavior.  Oh how I would.  And how I could.  Because you are most certainly correct that I am a black hearted sinner, full of hatred, foul languages and improper desires.  In a different life, in a different situation, if the doors slid in a slightly different direction and pace, I would let you know just how not like Jesus I can be.  But so is she.  And so are you.  And so is he.  We all fall short of the glory of God.  I hope there are a few things that people around me know: one of them is that I kinda suck as a human being, another is that I love Jesus and the last one is that I want to do a great job at whatever it is that I put my hand to.  The most important part of that factoid sandwich is Jesus.  So, it should not come as a surprise to you that this last round of libel has just wrecked me.  I can't really fight against that kind of insanity.

In light of this, as I'm hurtling headlong toward (insert age here), I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. I need a change of pace.  I need to, now that I'm wide awake, be myself and be appreciated for it. I have two and a half more weeks in which I will be blindly zooming (sic) toward disaster hoping that miraculously my eyes will be opened just in time to steer myself in the direction I "SHOULD" be going with my life and avoid the sudden calamitous end of this year of my life beginning yet another one where more of the same misfortune rules my days.  I don't know why I put that kind of ridiculous importance on the day i finally decided to slide out of my mother's birth canal.  But I do.

Here's to weathering the storm of January 27th and making some importantly difficult decisions with eyes wide open regardless of the day.

From the Indigo Girls...serious throwback to back in the day...

"There I am in younger days, star gazing,
Painting picture perfect maps of how my life and love would be
Not counting the unmarked paths of misdirection
My compass, faith in love's perfection
I missed ten million miles of road I should have seen
Meanwhile our friends we thought were so together
Left each other one by one in search of fairer weather
And we sit here in our storm and drink a toast
To the slim chance of love's recovery."

story of your life

I love people.  That isn't entirely true, not even remotely true for the most part.  By and large I hate people, they are annoying and I don't have time for them.  I love some people.  A few people, but those few I love hard, and for the rest of their lives unless they break that love with repeated, unforgivable, horrendous actions.  Somewhere nestled between the ranks of the hated and thus completely  ignored, and the beloved are those who have somehow broken into my life but I don't know what to think of them yet.  I love their stories.  So, I suppose, when I say I love people what I really mean to say is that I love people's stories: the details of their lives, the quiet subtleties they think don't make a difference to the arc, the huge fireworks inducing spectacular moments.  Everybody has a story, and the more stories that I listen to the more I find that every story is the same story.  We humans are predictable.  We make the same choices for the same reasons and experience the same emotions to the same events in our life cycles.  But what keeps us from being boring uninteresting robots is the way that though the colors are the same they come in different hues for each of us, the shades are all unique, there are infinite variations on the theme of humanness and this thrills me.

I not only love stories, but I need them.  I Need them in the way that the word covet is defined by Merriam Webster:

1   : to wish for earnestly <covet an award>

2

:  to desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably

intransitive verb

:  to feel inordinate desire for what belongs to another

I want the stories poured out of the soul of their possessors and to lock them away in a secret wardrobe in a chamber of my heart to keep and compare to others and sort and retell if only to myself.  I think that this is less of a Buffalo Bill style sign of serial killer-like psychosis and more of an indicator that I really want to use all of these stories to write my own story about the (wait for the cliche) human condition.

The need I have for other people's stories leads me to constantly ask questions.  "So what's your story?" is usually the entree that may seem like a polite casual inquiry bordering on small talk but will actually lead to an unending litany of questions that will eventually feel like they are designed to steal your soul and will only end if you insist.

Sometimes the questioning gives the wrong impression.  A person might think such pointed and persistent questioning is a sign that the one asking is interested in them, especially in a romantic way if we're talking about a guy, but it is just curiosity.  Curiosity killed the cat you know.  One might think it is rude or prying, but they have got me all wrong, I just love people...or their stories...or somehow a person's story makes me love them more? at all?  I find friendships and loves and and relationships of all kinds through their stories.  There is something about being given a free pass through a window of knowing the source of the exhilaration, ecstasy, jubilation, bliss, agony, anguish, defeat, depression, misery, contentment, amusement, anger in someone.  It binds you to them, ties you with the thread of commonality, so that we are all stitched together to some extent: more tightly to some and loosely to others, but inexorably tied through our stories.

So, this is the new year

Today is the first day of 2014.  I know thanks for the sherlock report, right. But just in case you were still so drunk that you can't figure out what day it is, after all of your mad reveling last night, I thought I'd state the obvious.  2014 is going to be a different sort of year for me, and I'll tell you why.

I'm a bit of a mocker and a scorner as far as New Year's resolutions go.  In fact, I am downright derisive of goal setting in general.  I grew up with a subliminal distaste for setting a clear endgame and grinding away in pursuit of it.  And look how far flying by the seat of my pants has gotten me. So it seems like the New Year, which already comes with a tradition of goal setting, is the perfect time to resolve to be just a little different than in years past.  Maybe it's time to let a new thing spring forth even now, in my own life.

I am going to start out with resolving to write something every day.  I am not saying I will blog every day.  I will practice writing every day in some manner.  This is a goal, so if I don't reach it immediately, I'm also not going to completely give up.  Writing is really the only thing that I know I'm good at, and I really love.  It's taken me three decades to come to this point where I don't constantly hear the negative voices of self loathing and self doubt and no longer care what I imagine people might think of what I write.  I love it and I'm doing it.  The missing ingredients here are the "grind" mentality of doing the work every day in this arena, and (perhaps most importantly) an education in writing.  (For you newbies, my education in is Biology; it would seem one should have a doctorate in the Letters from Oxford or some such in order to be taken seriously in the field of literature.)

Next, I'm resolving to work out 5 times a week.  This one needs no explanation.  I have had a sporadic, at best, workout regimen this past year.  Don't get it twisted, I'm not trying to run a marathon (or a half marathon, cuz i'm only half insane), enter anyone's garage games or anything like that...I'm just trynna be workin' on my fitness and han'lin' my bidniz...so that just in case the fight or flight instinct should kick in, I will be ready and able to heed its call.

Third, I am steadfastly committing to cleansing my constant inner monologue of all inactionable thought trash. 2013 has been host to an obscenely busy brain locked inside my skull, through whose gray matter freeways have been carved out by repetitive rehashing of thoughts that don't need thinking.  So, if I cannot act upon the thought and it isn't adding to my life by its truth and loveliness then I will, as Nanny would say, schlingitiva! castitute! get rid of it.  I have a tendency to wrap myself in the warm blanket of obsessively looking down several roads that diverge in a wood and then going on a walter mitty style walkabout down each and every one of those meandering roads.  This is an utter waste of time. It ends as of today.

This next one should probably have been first, but I'm also bad at prioritizing: cling to Jesus like my life depends on it.  Grow closer to Him, learn His voice, listen to His voice, allow Him to have His way in my life.  I'll probably need a few more moments of solitude, a little more of the little things that bring you closer to God.  I am bad at these things and my resolve seems weak in this matter.  Jesus will most literally have to take the wheel on this resolution.

Included in my resolutions this year are some travel plans: I'm taking my sons on an epic road trip this year...one that requires planning and perhaps a bigger vacation budget than in years past and I'm going solo to Europe...so, I suppose I should head straight to the passport office tomorrow. Or the next day.

So there they are. They are simple resolutions for the most part-hopefully that is going to translate into some of them lasting the year.  Or not. We will have to see. Happy New Year's and if you live in Malaysia and have been checking out my blog please leave a comment!

Merry X-mas (yes x, look up the etymology/symbolism fools!) Libretto

Another thing besides sporadic blogging that I like to do is make a playlist.  This is most certainly a vestige of my gen x youth during which I made, gave away, and received many a mix tape.  Oh memorex!  Usually I make a playlist for one of two reasons: the celebration of the birth of Christ and the death of someone's loved one.

So here we are December 22nd and I feel safe releasing this year's playlist to the world.  Some of the songs may take you back, others might educate you; some you may love and there are ones I guarantee you will hate.  Each song has made it onto this playlist for a special reason, and, as far as it is appropriate, I will let you in on those reasons.

1. Ave Maria-Christina Perri:  The closet Catholic in me loves the Ave Maria in all of its forms.  This year it is making a Christina Perri turn because I have a sneaking suspicion that 14 year old Mary would have sung in this kind of voice.  Mary is a perfect example of humility and submission through faith, yielding her will and her body and reputation along with it to the unfathomable plan of the Holy Spirit for our reconciliation to the Father.  Full, indeed, of grace, as grace itself dwelt within her for nine months, through the power of only grace.

2.  Mary Did You Know-C-Lo  Green:  The Prov Dance Troupe makes me cry every year, throw this song in the mix, sung by that crazy animal lovin' former Goodie Mobster and I'm just bawling my eyes out.  But really, Mary did you know?  As a mom, it's a legit question.

3.  Hark!  The Herald Angels Sing- Nat King Cole:  In the movie of my life, Nat King Cole is my grandfather and sings me sweet Christmas carols  like this one.  "Mild He lay His glory by, born that man no more must die." Gets me EVERY time.

4.  All I Want for Christmas is You-Mariah Carey:  Mom danced a wild hybrid jig/charleston with such abandon about the kitchen to this song. I am sad for all of those who never saw it.  I'm pretty sure my little brother relived this in leopard tights and a foxy shirt the year mom died, the last year we all christmas'd together.  This song holds the perfectly ironic mix of joy unspeakable and abject heartbreak for me.  Laugh 'til you cry.

5.  Mele Kalikimaka-Bing Crosby:  I have had a secret love affair with Bing Crosby since I was a very young child.  I suppose I first fell in love with his voice and then later with all those black and white movie musicals he was in.  Living in Florida is reminiscent of the sentiment in this song, especially today, at the beach.

6.  Silent Night-Sufjan Stevens:  I love that there are no lyrics sung in this version; it is properly silent.

7.  Christmas Day-Dido:  When I was younger and a good deal more naive and still believed in true love and that it was available for me, I loved this song, thinking I would in a single meeting fall in love with some knight of old and he would go off and promise to return to me on Christmas day, and that this would indeed come to fruition on that Christmas day when we would promptly get married.  Yes, after approximately 3 hours of knowing each other!  I failed to hear the key words in the last verse:  those were the last words she EVER heard him say.

8.  Happy Christmas-Maroon 5:  We all know and love the original.  But, I am currently in the midst of a very torrid and very REAL (imaginary) romance with Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine.  Grrrr...beard, plaid, singing, tats, hugging people on the voice.  Sometimes I get jealous of Blake Shelton.  And then later that night Adam phones me to say it's all just for ratings.

9.  Blue Christmas-Bright Eyes:  This version is just melancholie enough.  I don't know why, but there's always someone I can imaginate into this song, every year, without fail.

10.  Baby It's Cold Outside- James Taylor and Natalie Cole:  I actually dislike the arrangement, especially the instrumentals.  And while I love nat's voice, I am not a huge fan of natalie's.  But I love James Taylor, so I imagine a young James and Carly singing this in their innocence, before the marriage and fighting ruined the sweetness.

11.  You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch:  SERIOUSLY, I LOVE THIS SONG. "Given the choice between the two, I'd take the seasick crocodile!"

12.  Christmas Without You-OneRepublic:  Sometime you just need to get your Ryan Tedder on.

13.  Christmas Waltz-She & Him:  I like to think the disagreement between object and subject pronouns here is purposeful and adorable.  It's an adorable new Christmas song.  I love a new song.  Mix it up! Favorite line fragment: "in three quarter time."

14.  I Wonder as I Wander-Jewel:  Jewel really can disguise her voice.  No, really, is that ACTUALLY jewel?  Anyway the lyrics are grande.  Grande Latte.

15.  Oh Come All Ye Faithful-Phil Wickham:  His voice makes me think he really loves Jesus.  He really wants us to come and behold the king of angels with him.  Plus, I Love a Linus reading of the Christmas story!

16.  Oh Little Town of Bethlehem-Annie Lennox:  I am pretty sure Annie Lennox is ACTUALLY one of the Cherubim.  Does she or does she not appear to be (and sound like) a ferocious, fiery, angelic being dedicated to constant worship of God and the protection of His throne room from those who are not worthy to enter.  I don't always love when a songstress strays so far from the original tune, but Annie can do what she wants.  I love her voice. It is magic, angelic even.  Cherubic.  "Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today...come to us, abide in us, our Lord, Emmanuel."

17.  Away in a Manger-Drew Holcomb:  I was introduced to Drew through Blood Water Mission and the 1,000 Well Project, during a different stretch of my life, when I was really passionate about being an instrument in saving the world from all its social ills.  This version of this song sings to me of that time.

18.  Hark! The Herald: Vienna Boys Choir..This is incorrectly labelled as in Handel's Messiah it is actually entitled "For Unto Us a Child is Born."  It matters not.  I absolutely love Handel's Messiah.  On a recent journey home from North Caroline I listened to the entire performance by the London Symphony Orchestra.  It was insane.  It tells the whole story.  No stone left unturned.  The goosebumps caused by chills that I get listening to it actually hurt.

19.  Comfort and Joy-Tori Amos:  Tori is some sort of woodland faerie and she has a very interesting take on some lines from an old classic.

20. Evergreen-Switchfoot:  This song has the angst of the old grunge era of my teen years.  It also has a few lines that I believe to be a reference to a Pink Floyd song.  I love songs that refer to songs of yesteryear.  I love switchfoot but you guys already know that.  I do really want to be alive all year long, and these years I feel less and less alive thanks to a cold breeze that has been chilling the fervor in my heart annum after annum so that now all I have is an icicle of a heart that barely wakens from its hibernation for a few moments every year, but doesn't have the energy to sustain it so falls back asleep in hopes for something miraculous to happen and really thaw it out permanently.

21.  Be Still-The Fray:  Everything about this song is just perfect.  I have been rereading Brennan Manning's Souvenirs of Solitude.  I am incapable of wrapping my mind around the idea of a lengthy, purposeful, silent retreat from all humans and other stimuli.  I have  a pretty serious case of adult ADHD so being still is impossible in my humanity.  "Be still, and know that I AM with you, and I will sing your name."  Beautiful.  It is a very real call on my heart.

22.  Beautiful Things-Gungor:  I really believe that next year is gonna be a beautiful year, in a practical, visceral, carnal, REAL, human way.  Not just spiritual.  But in my actual life, things are going to be really beautiful.  I am by nature a realist (read pessimist) but I am flippin the script this year.  Name it and claim it Jess is in effect.  Leggo, I'm finna take off! (Laura that was for you...shofar and all)

Merry CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! Hands skyward, shoulder shrug, weird voice.

The Island

I have to take a break, which may be permanent, from blogging my novel. I will write it one day.  For now, here's a little something you might like to hear about.

There is an island I know like the island on Lost, only instead of floating in an actual ocean this island is suspended in the water above the land that separates the waters above and below, tethered to the time space continuum by a tattered thread that causes the island to spin and twist as the thread unravels. When I think about this island, I hear the song from Peter Pan, "it's not on any chart, you must find it with your heart" but sung by Union Station; and indeed there are aspects of it that are just like the island of lost boys.  You have to travel there under dark of night and think lovely thoughts and hold your breath as you pass through the waters.  You are ushered in by rows and rows of tall evergreens that are carefully manicured in a strangely germanic fashion - undergrowth and brush all cyclically burned away, leaving only the majestically tallest and strongest rooted in the ground, stretching through the sky.  The island itself is a small, quaint, quiet middle-class community of older homes made with natural materials hidden behind the contours of foliage that predates any human dwellers, and newer homes whose clean look and sparse landscaping speaks of an attempt at domestication of this feral terrain. The entire island is ensconced by immense guardian farms of storied landed gentry whose money is most certainly invested in keeping its secrets and protecting its inhabitants as much as they need protection or are willing to accept it.

When you get there you immediately feel the change.  The air is a bit cooler, crisper, and cleaner, and much heavier.  No the air is lighter and gravity is heavier, not so much heavier that it is crushing, but heavier enough to make you feel the earth beneath your feet a little more intimately.  I'm sure that compasses don't work there, due to some kind of ever changing spinning magnetic vortex.  Every time the tether to this earth makes a new pendulum swing, it changes the whole mood of the island and it takes some adjustment on your part as the visitor. As my sister would say, you have to get your sea legs.  Sometimes down is up, sometimes sideways is soup, and always winter is the hap-happiest season of all.  In real life, summer is the best season with its ocean and warmth and sun and tanned, fit, beach bodies and careless ease.  But that's when here there seems to be too much free time causing seriousness and summertime sadness that Lana del Rey sings about and while to me she is referring to the end of summertime to the island I know it is the actual summer itself.

The bite in the air the winter wind flies in with it wakes the island natives and draws new members of the pack in an attempt to prove their alpha status.  They become restless and wild, full of compliments and fire. Maybe no shave November plays a part turning the formerly clean shaven baby faces into refuges for a chorus of woodland creatures.  Maybe the increased gravity makes their muscles grow instantaneously and the winter husky is translated into chiseled bodies in contrast to the winter coat of hibernation insulation of the real world.  Maybe they're just on "that cycle" - finally.  Traps and lats and delts, triceps and biceps and even glutes are on prominent display. The uniform of the day is most obviously the shirts from that mystery flannel vintage etsy shop everyone keeps pinning.  The number and variety of shapes and sizes and softness and number of buttons that are undone (strangely it doesn't seem at all Miami vice of them to have 3 or even 4 unbuttoned buttons) invites a careful survey and cataloguing with margin notes that mimic the original intent of the facebook.  This winter shift turns mere mortals who might not normally even turn your head into the Thor-like hottest hottie mchottertons that ever hotted.

When I am old, I want to live part of the year in the no man's land between the island and the estates.  I want to buy a small shake shingle cottage with a wrap around porch in the woods.  It seems like the perfect place to write a book.  I can only take the island itself in short spurts.  A day, maybe two at the most, at a time.  I am not immune to believing that, like the Island on Lost, it is all real and it all matters and so I am susceptible to losing my bearing and an attachment to reality.  My actual life demands that I stay firmly planted on the land where I know in which direction north lies at all times.  But I can dip my toe in on a bi-monthly basis and drink from the fountain and let it keep me young for a little while longer.