Empty Stockings, or Just a Minute on The Night Before Christmas

In the morning, the stockings are always full of something, whether it's all we could scrape together, or just the tip of an iceberg of booty. Could be soap and socks and chocolate. A big navel orange lodged stubbornly in the toe. Could be coal. Dreaded coal! Or whatever. They're full.

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care. Empty stockings. No sooner do we picture the stockings hung than we're hit with the hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be there. In fact, their emptiness isn't even mentioned. We just figure they're empty. Why would anyone put up a full stocking? But come now. We have no time to think on this, because we are distracted by, prisoner to, totally wrapped up In Hopes that St. Nicholas Soon Will Be There. Dammit!

O, call it the excitement and anticipation of a Christmas Eve if you will, but - if you care - we've missed something. We've missed the exquisite emptiness of that foot-shaped, gaudy, felt or velvet or woolen ornament nailed up - or hung from shiny, mantle-saving, weighted custom brass hooks. Never meant to be worn, only to be filled.

Before something can be filled, it must be emptied. And we're full. Full of thoughts, desires, fears, memories, intentions, stories, worries, strategies, lists, shames, triumphs past, and losses to come. Full of wanting, needing, grasping, avoiding, conniving, wishing, praying, bargaining, using, reaching, spinning...you get it. We're full.

The stockings, hung by the chimney with care, are empty.

And somehow, in the dead of night, they're filled.

Legend has it that our actions through the year dictate the contents. Tradition holds that we get what we need, with a deluxe old-world twist: New mittens, warm socks. Soap. A tiny book of Oscar Wilde quotations. That Orange. The contemporary sensibility has room for some astonishing bauble, or electronic device. Now that's full.

And the stockings are emptied again.

They're laid in the box with the creche and the garland, the books and the lights, and they wait.

No, wait. They don't wait. They lie still.

They are emptied. Maybe they will again be filled.

Train yesterday/today

Yesterday morning, the traincar was all stillness, like a temple lumbering over the rails, like a body of water that has never known agitation.

Today, it is all motion, inside and out; a den of idiosyncrasy:

A man speaking awful fast about new fibre optic TV

A woman who tears the newspaper, long and luxuriously, over and over, as if everything is fascinating

A right snoring fellow, short enough to lay himself flat out on the seats, startling with his snorts

This lady loves her dentist, hates her hygenist

This guy's coughs are classic cigarette + chest cold & may only lift in May

And remarkably, I'm drifting along in peace over all of it, banana peel draped over my thigh, unopened yogurt in dangling hand, part of the fresco, nodding off myself

Letting the glorious machine run all the way downtown in its vivid completeness.

In the evening, two dudes sit facing one another, each with a hot, fragrant pail of poutine, and I feel like asking them:

Where were you guys this morning?

The U.S. Election: What Is The 6th?

Today, I turn 38. And they're going to the polls down south to elect a President.

A few work colleagues and I wondered about my birthday + US Presidential election history, and honestly I didn't know a lot about it. 

So, in the spirit of the day, I dug up a few things (with the help of Wikipedia).

Since 1848, the beginning of single US Presidential election dates across all states...here's what's happened in Presidential elections falling on November 6:
 
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, R, beat three opponents for his first election as President. Momentous, and a watershed moment for the United States and its practice of slavery...a trigger for southern secession and eventual civil war. 
 
1888, Benjamin Harrison, R, defeats incumbent Grover Cleveland, D, in the electoral college...but Cleveland won the Popular Vote! And would be back! This election formed the backdrop for the 1968 Disney musical film 'The One And Only Original Family Band!' Eh? Songs by the Sherman brothers? Yeah.
 
1900, William McKinley, R, re-elected, over William Jennings Bryan, D. Bryan was unsuccessful in his second attempt to beat McKinley, who would be assassinated the following September, in Buffalo, as the old 'White House Blues' goes.

1928, Herbert Hoover, R, beats Al Smith, D. Al Smith's Big Problem? Anti-Catholic sentiment. There was apparently a current of paranoia that if Smith won the White House, the Pope would come and rule the US from a fortified location in Washington. Whoooa!
 
1956 - Dwight D. Eisenhower, R, beats Adlai Stevenson, D, earning re-election. A rematch of 1952 - and the most recent rematch to this day. They still liked Ike. (Sorry, couldn't resist)
 
1984 - Ronald Reagan, R, re-elected by a landslide over Walter Mondale, D. Reagan won the biggest total of electoral votes of any Presidential candidate (525 out of 538).
 
...and that brings us to...today.

If Barack Obama wins re-election, he'll be the first Democrat to notch a Presidential election victory on a November 6th. So there's that.

But the 6th is, after all, just the 6th.

What is a pattern?

Anything can happen.

I could be born, an unimagined soul, alongside countless others.

An entire country could take a step toward a widely-imagined future.

We'll read tea leaves, blow out candles, and carry on.

The Cure for Halloweariness

Ah yes, Halloween. The holiday that isn't a holiday but should be a holiday but will never be a holiday because...well, because maybe we've reached our Holiday Cost Limit as a society. Or at least our Holiday Entitlement Limit.

But that doesn't change our behaviour in the least. Many of us tempt insanity getting ourselves and our children ready for the Halloween Pageant, with God knows how much of our dough sunk into shitty novelties, tiny chocolate bars, and costume supplies of varying quality. And hey, I'm not saying all this is No Fun; it's just ...A Lot.

The early home rush hour rivals that of many holidays, but somehow that spirit of goodwill is lacking.

Maybe it's because of the gloom and general creepiness of the day; after all, we're facing tiny ghouls, goblins, and assorted licensed cartoon characters...but we're also facing DEATH ITSELF; something many of us have trouble staring down without a level of fear that can spawn anti-social grumbling on public transit, or some good old-fashioned wheel-gripping and dash-pounding.

Yes, we need a Halloween Holiday. On November 1, naturally, if we could pick just the one day. Give us the chance to sleep in, hide/throw away half of our children's bounty, wash the makeup off of their faces slowly, with far more care than the current weekday regimen allows.

And maybe, just maybe, take some time to reflect on The Dead; try to make inroads into our meagre understanding of mortality, draw the reaper a little nearer, with or without the aid of Blue Öyster Cult.

Our own government-mandated, country-wide Día de los Muertos. I can think of no better way to shake off the fog of consumerist masquerade than to a) take a day off; and b) consider the fate we all share, the life we have shared with those who have passed on, and the signs of rebirth in our midst.

I understand...we may not deserve yet another statutory holiday. We wouldn't want to get all...soft...or anything.

So I'll take part b) forward, without part a): Think fondly of The Dead as I pick myself up and go in To Work.

Feels That Way

Feels like last night was the end of something, and this morning is the beginning of a whole new thing.

I get it -- that's how it's supposed to work, that's the mechanism. Our daily opportunity. But it's rare that I notice, and still rarer that it comes over me the way it has.

Feels good. I don't even have to do anything about it.

Looking at the Moon with Declan

On the ferryboat
Looking at the moon

There it is
In the sky

And, he immediately notes
On the water

A great smear
That has eluded the painters
Of the world

It is not the moon
May not be real

An effect
So irresistable
So integral
To this moment

It mesmerizes the darting eyes
Of my son
In my arms
At the rail
On the deck

The reflection
Is what he sees
Right after he sees the moon
And he says so:

'The moon...
...And the moon in the water?'