holiday_spirit nr it's not about the holidays so much as the coziness. sitting in an armchair in a dimly lit cafe by the window, catching the soft snowfall with one eye and the glint of christmas lights inside with the other, drinking a mug of delicious hot chocolate, reading a short story collection or listening to a christmas playlist of your choosing... it seems like a good way to calm the nervous system. 251125 ... raze mine is at a pretty low ebb these_days. but that likely has more to do with the dimming of the larger light that keeps this body from breaking down. i always found that good jazz captured the essence of christmas for me somehow, in a way i couldn't quite put into words. or at least it served as a suitable soundtrack when i played it on the day. i suspect that might be because of the way vince guaraldi's music for "a charlie brown christmas" seeped into me when i was a kid. those songs are deathless. anyway. maybe i should dust off some miles_davis or something and see about making a misshapen angel with the spreading of my weathered wings, assuming there's snow on the ground when the time comes. that's never a given anymore. and it just doesn't feel like christmas without a blanket of white draped over everything. 251125 ... ovenbird Mine is a ghost wrapped in rags wandering an old church cemetery at midnight while strains of “In the Bleak Midwinter” float in on a raft of snowflakes. I often feel that I’m locked out of something magical, something I can remember in a hazy way but no longer get to experience. The lights make me maudlin and nostalgic, I feel overwhelmed by all the things I have to do to make the season joyful for my children, and almost everything makes me ache to be a child again. I want just one more Christmas with my whole, imperfect family: everyone laughing too loud, my cousin and I knocking over the Christmas tree, a detailed assessment of whether this year’s perogies are the very best ones yet, the strange sweet grit of squares of halvah collapsing on my tongue, voices of a Ukrainian choir drifting from the stereo, the conspicuous absence of my estranged uncle, the awkward family photos in front of the tree. I want it back. All of it. But my grandparents are all gone now and I haven’t had a Christmas at home in thirteen years, not since my son was born and travelling over the holidays became too expensive and too stressful and we all decided that it would be more practical to see each other at other times of year. We_lose_so_much and even the memories dissolve in time’s river. I can still hear my Baba’s voice in my head and see the lick of fire in the fireplace and the embroidered Saint Nicholas with his gold threads flashing. But for how long? My Christmas spirit lets out a mournful sigh and feels the sharp stab of holly beneath her feet. 251126 what's it to you? who go blather from