Author: Teel

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.
-Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)

In response to someone else’s take on the holidays, I thought I’d write about mine.

I like Christmas. The religious aspect is important to me, because I am a Christian. I believe that Jesus is the son of God, and that his life here on Earth should be remembered and celebrated. I also like the other aspects of it. I like festive decorations and blinking lights and Christmas music. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with the nominal reason for the season (celebrating Christ), but I also like the entire Santa Claus mythology. I don’t remember ever believing in Santa Claus as a child, but I certainly do now. I even like Christmas movies like ‘Elf’ and both The Santa Clause and The Santa Clause 2, plus classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and modern ones like Family Man. But let’s break it down:

1. Santa hats (etc…). I think silly hats are great, any time of the year, and if the “holiday season” can get otherwise overly conservative people to wear silly hats, I’m all for it. I like seeing people color-matching with the decorations, lowering their inhibitions and using the holidays as an excuse to dress in ways they normally couldn’t get away with (due to irrational societal pressures): in bright, contrasting colors, with bits and bobs of fluff and fancy.

2. Christmas Spirit. This follows directly from the last one; during the holidays, people are allowed to loosen up and be less conservative not just their clothing choices, but in their behavior as well. In the workplace the dress codes are loosened, people listen to cheerful music and are even free to sing along (no matter how poorly), knowing that they will not be considered unusual for it. People volunteer more, donate more to charitable causes, work soup kitchens, and generally try to be more “nice” and less “naughty”, and while I would appreciate seeing it during more of the year, every little bit helps. I could go on about the difference between reality and the perception of reality being meaningless, such that whether people are acting out of a true spirit of kindness or simply putting on an act becomes meaningless, but … not now.

3. Christmas Music. Man, do I love Christmas music. I finished ripping all my Christmas CD’s into my iMac back in September, and I have exactly 187 Christmas songs in the regular rotation of my main playlist. Most of them have been filtering into my playlist since September. I have acquired at least two new Christmas albums this year though to add to my total, and may see if I can get a good deal on Christmas music next week. Some songs, mostly the ones that are actually about Jesus and/or his birth, I could listen to all year. Others seem to simply be ‘winter’ songs or generic ‘holiday’ songs (ie: Jingle Bells, Silver Bells, Deck the Halls, etc…), and will be removed from my playlists over time. I’m not altogether satisfied with all Christmas music, but usually because (regardless of the subject) it’s just bad music. Christmas rap music doesn’t do it for me, for instance. More than that I find myself noticing (on albums with multiple artists) which artists are doing Christmas songs about Christ and which artists are doing … other songs. I mean, really; when you write your own, new ‘holiday’ song and leave Christ out of Christmas entirely, I can see where you stand. Still, the songs that get the most play are the classics I like the most, and I like being able to hum or sing along with music I know and love everywhere I go in November and December. It gives me a good feeling.

4. Christmas TV ‘Specials’. I uhh… In previous years I’ve typically been too busy with other Christmas activities (shopping, partying, going to church, etc…) to see all the new and old and strange ‘specials’ that the networks put on the air every year. This year, I simply don’t have TV. I mean, right now I’m in Phoenix, but since I haven’t been watching TV anyway, I wouldn’t know what specials are and aren’t playing and why I’d want to watch them. They’re meaningless to me, but … someone must like them. Whatever.

5. Drinking. I uhhh… I dunno. I never drank for the “holidays”, and have been trying (successfully) in the last few months to cut back on and limit my drinking of any alcohol, ever. But in relation to Christmas, here’s a quick anecdote: I was over at my older sister (April)’s place the other day, and we were discussing Christmas. She’s having all her extended family over to her place on Christmas, including me, my dad, Heath and Angela. She asked me “What do you like in your eggnog?” and for a long moment I simply did not understand the question. I thought perhaps she was going to try to make egg nog from scratch and wanted to know if I had recipe suggestions. I was about to recommend that she freshly grate her own nutmeg when it finally occurred to me (Okay, she had to clarify the question. Twice.) that she wanted to know what alcohol I prefered in my egg nog. I have no idea. I’ve never had alcohol in egg nog. Thinking about it I was (and still am) pretty sure I wouldn’t like egg nog if it had alcohol in it. Ewww.

6. Miscellaneous Irrational Behavior. Tying back into my first two points, any kind of “letting loose” and what seems like “behaving out of character” that the holidays can create is a good thing. If only because it allows people to see through new eyes, even just for a few weeks. For many people, I believe, it is an opportunity to loosen the collar and behave more like they would normally behave if not weighed down by societal pressures. Singing out, loud and clear. Spending time and effort and money trying to bring happiness and joy to all the important people in their lives at once. Spending extra time with friends and family, reaching out to people they might not otherwise have said one word to. All of these things can be good, and yes, they should be seen more throughout the year, but whether someone spends one day every week and a half behaving this way or for six weeks at the end of the year, it still has a positive effect on their lives and the lives of those around them.

All in all, the Christmas season brings a good feeling to my life and most of the people I know. It also stimulates the economy and creates a lot fo temporary jobs. In addition, it allows people to behave in ways that they otherwise would not be allowed to without fear of being shunned socially and perhaps losing footing in their workplaces, just for expressing themselves and being jolly. It brings joyful music into every corner and stands as a reminder that Christ lived. If only for its nominal reason (Christ lived and died so that we could be given everlasting life), it should bring joy to every heart.

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Today, while working with … huge steel trusses … moving them from one place to another (shuffling, always shuffling), there was a little error which resulted in one of them falling over … while I was standing in its path. Which was quite unsettling. If I had moved one step in any direction, I would surely have been crushed beneath it, breaking an arm, a leg, and if I had moved in the most obvious direction, it would have landed on my head with thousands of pounds of pressure. Hooray for escaping death! It came close enough that it knocked my hat off my head.

I uhh… I walked immediately away to try to calm down. That almost worked.

Other than that, we didn’t get a single thing done that we intended to do today, and didn’t finish the job we were trying to do instead. So, yeah. I’m back in Phoenix again. Will be here … a while. Tomorrow back in Pine during the day, but then in Phoenix through Christmas… and I don’t know what after that. Dentist appointment the morning of the 24th; I’m getting clean teeth for Christmas.

More later.

UPDATE: Here’s a snapshot showing what we were working with today. That’s my dad riding the truss (the chain to the forklift, while holding it up, is not at a balance point, so he’s holding this end down), and that’s me using a rope to try to steer it.

It is … very late.

I have been … well, let me try to write this in the right order …

My Christmas gift from my father arrived Thursday. The Journey to Wild Divine, a computer “game” that uses biofeedback to interact with in-game “events” and challenges and which helps one improve conscious control of their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing patterns, muscle tension, etc… through the process of the game. It includes biofeedback hardware, so was not something I expected to be able to afford myself soon, so it made an excellent gift. I am glad to have it. Due to various factors, we decided I could open it as soon as it arrived, Thursday, and install it (it has PC and Mac versions both, and since it only has one set of biofeedback hardware, I could really only use one copy of it at a time if I wanted to…) on this (my father’s) PC. The whole family has been trying it out, with varying levels of success and interest. And where I knew that one of the primary reasons I was interested in it was that I have trouble relaxing and I have … seemingly unhealthy heart … conditions, I was not expecting immediate success with it. The first time I tried it, I was trying it with my brother, and while he could do “Okay” right away, I simply couldn’t relax enough to get it to respond. Or get my energy up enough for it to respond, when that was required. But tonight I played at it for almost two hours and learned some effective relaxation techniques.

Now, the game will teach some to me… but I have a knack for doing things in the wrong order, and I have done a fair amount of exploring and a few events that I “don’t yet know how to do” I have completed … anyway, such that probably I’ll come to the beginning relaxation technique … later. And I haven’t quite worked out the proper way to raise my energy, but I saved right before the game was going to teach me that, so maybe tomorrow. But let me say this: Where on the first three times I tried to do the relaxation events I couldn’t get more than a whisper of relaxation, tonight I found success.

It really became clear to me at a little pond surrounded by six golden frogs where my relaxation’s effect was that it rained harder the more I relaxed. First a darkening sky, then a little sprinkling of rain, and as I reached the appropriate stage of relaxation, a good, soothing downpour, which triggered a (fairly awful, new-age) song.

You see, instead of just trying to count as I breathed in and out, or to watch the little sparkle that represents my energy level move in response to me, as soon as I relaxed enough that the rain began to sprinkle, specific imagery came into my mind. Standing in the rain next to Jen. A soft sprinkling, a harder downpour, getting wet and all that, but feeling good … being with her. Just Jen, entering my mind at all, moved that sparkle half an inch. I closed my mind and visualized the memories I have with her in the rain, and I could feel myself relaxing. I opened my eyes and my little blue sparkle was calmer than it had ever shown. I continued to think about her, about times we’ve shared, about the feeling of her body pressed hard against mine in a hug, and she carried me right through into a full-fledged rainstorm.

And I kept going through relaxation events, and I tried their recommended breathing exercises with some success, but then I would think about Jen, about perhaps what it would be like to be “with” her, in a relationship, in marriage, anywhere my imagination glanced, I realized in my mind, and generally became more and more relaxed. As I progressed, right up to the point where I was about to learn the invigorating “Heart Breath”, I fixed it into my mind to go, finally, and read her blog. I talk to her on the phone and in person infrequently, but … I have not been reading her blog … well, when I was first linked to it I found only posts gushing and/or ranting about her current or lost loves respectively, (two men she chose to be with immediately following two occasions I expressed interest in her and she said she was not looking for a relationship at the time) and … could not bring myself to pick it up as daily reading. So at around one thirty, I switched from the Wild Divine to Jen’s blog. I read back … most of the way through it … a little over a year’s worth of posts, and … most of the major events I remember… except that I guess … she doesn’t seem to tell me (directly) about her relationships when they’re going good, only when they’re going bad. And apparently censors me completely out of her life. Which .. I know I’m not a big part of it right now, and I know that … when she is “with” another man she doesn’t want them to really know I even exist … but … oh well. I … got past the early posts about the troubled times at the end of her relationship with the father of her son and … petered out. I looked up and it was 2:45AM.

And … and as I was reading through her blog, I was downloading iTunes 4.2 for Windows (an update from the 4.0 that was here), but it had another 15+ minutes left, so I started writing this. And right -now- it’s a little after 3:30AM. And the “posted” time below is … the time I’ve finished this and put it online. So forgive any spelling or typing errors, please; I’m probably just dreaming all this.

And speaking of dreams, I need to stop dreaming of Jen. I tried calling her the other day and … she was clearly distraught. She sounded like she had been sobbing. She sounded like she needed a hug. She wouldn’t say what had happened, what was going on, anything. I have some wild guesses, but … of course … they’re wild. It could be that, it could be anything. She should be happy, proud, she just finished school and is now (or will very soon be, depending on how long the paperwork takes to process) a licensed massage therapist. She’s worked long and hard to reach this point, and she deserves congratulations and respect at the least. Due to timing and transportation issues I could not be there at her graduation ceremony, and for that I am sorry. But … there is something else. I want to be there for her. Really be there for her. But it seems like she doesn’t want to let me do that. When something is wrong, or right, I want to be someone she is comfortable talking to about it, sharing it with. But … she doesn’t. And I’m not sure she has anyone else for some of it. I worry about her. I want to help if I can, to be a listening ear and … do whatever I can… I want at least to know that someone is there for her, if it can’t, or she won’t let it, be me. But even that seems to be blocked now.

I close my eyes and see her, and I can imagine the two of us together, I can see behind my eyelids Jen not just an old friend, but a wife. I can see her son not just as someone else’s child, but as someone whose life I could take part in. I have a rich and vivid imagination. And unfortunately, it seems, almost no contact with reality. I don’t know what upset her the other day, or whether she’s still upset. I’ll probably try to call her ‘today’ when I get up later and see, but right now … I just don’t know. I don’t know much about what happened between Jen and the father of her son, or what has been going on with her (presumably still) current ‘boyfriend’. There are snippets in the blog, and there’s everything she told me, but it isn’t a complete picture. And I’m not in the picture at all. My mind, my heart, my imagination, they can do a great many things. They cannot put me into someone’s life when I am not there, not wanted. I need to learn that.

I need to learn that, and I need to learn to stop seeing so much that isn’t there yet. That may never exist.

That will very likely never exist.

We know this isn’t the first time.

We know my mind, my heart, my imagination, they can tap into joy, they can generate love, they can convince me that things can work. We also know that it takes two to make love work.

And that … so far, anyway … I haven’t met returning love.

**********

I need to find someone to cure me of my ridiculous obsession with love.