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christmas is all about the creeping sense of being alone. the everpresent wide assortment of hallmarkiness floating in the yuletide season, has nearly infected every country on the planet. are these new things? are people surprised to find me more scrooge before the ghosts, rather than yelling at the boy in the street for to fetch a goose dinner? i believe not.
but i'm not as much bitter as i am hardened by the now-not-as-fun-as-it-was-when-i-was-6-years-old of the annual spectacle. i mean, you have christmas, then new year's, then i have a birthday...i mean, how much can i really stand to drink?
take this for example, there is a christmas tree in my office, in bangkok, in thailand. this isn't to say that there aren't christians here, or that only christians are entitled to the celebration of baby jeebus, but for the sake of argument...what the hell is a christmas tree doing in the lobby of my building? a-buhh? meh? shu-huuh? it's a query; it really is.
but, aloneness. being alone. being single, and being alone,
and then finding others like you, and banding together in a drunken gathering of seasonal holly, rum-tainted super grandma's egg-nog, bells ringing from distant places, fat old men feeling up grown women in dirty themed-parties, and mistle toe being first sworn and cursed at, then later utilized for a plethora of interactive activities.
after i turned 17, my normal christmas activities consisted of getting together with all of those friends of mine who had divorced parents, different religious backgrounds, or just had laid-back non-holiday everyday sort of "berkeley" moms. this totaled to about 4-5.
we'd get together and make a tape. a super mix-tape, dedicated to our complete lack of christmas spirit...save that for whiskey, rums, and Guinness. for some reason that's obvious, we'd have the best mix made ever (every year), but by morning lose the tape among the ragnarok which ensued. and for some other dumb-ass reason, we never thought to actually look for more than a few minutes.
we'd play guitar and drink and rant and sing and dance and spit and have just the best of times people can have when they're mad drunk and blissfully non-celebratory.......good times.
being here on this, a very unruly workload-laden stressful christmas eve, i find myself working, anxious, depressed, seemingly hopeful, and oddly charlie-brown about it all. meaning a blah C- sort of state of being. and that's okay.
so here's to being alone with other people that are alone. maybe we'll get to that tape making drunken dancery guitar-fest next year. tell grandma to spike the egg-nog extra special just for me.
to end this post, a beautifully written piece of music, in lyric form.
merry x-mas from bangkokia!
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ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
it's not warm when she's away.
ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
and she's always gone too long,
anytime she goes away.
wonder this time where she's gone.
wonder if she's gonna stay.
ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
and this house just ain't no home,
anytime she goes away.
(26 "i know's" in succession)
hey, i ought to leave the young thing alone,
ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
only darkness every day.
ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
and this house just ain't no home,
anytime she goes away.
ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
it's not warm when she's away...
anytime she goes away,
anytime she goes away,
anytime she goes away.
"ain't no sunshine"
- bill withers -
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