We will be ending out Christmas Carol Wednesday. For now we wanted you guys to have a nice pinup for the holiday. For now enjoy some reflections from my Christmas Eve Morning and Afternoon:

Well here we are again dear readers, and the holiday of holidays is upon us. And the New Year follows fast behind. 2008 beckons with delicate and inviting fingers. And now is the time to take stock of the Holiday.

This will be a different Christmas for me this year. The lifestyle dynamic has changed, the status quo been shattered, and a scorched earth end has come to the eco system of old. Such is the way of things, and nobody, but nobody would ever tell you that I’m not 100% better for it. I am, truly happy, for the first time since before I knew what woes the world could muster. Which has been a very long time.

So here I sit, watching the twinkle of a child addled Christmas Tree and dozing ever so slightly to the truly lovely tones of the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Now that’s Christmas music folks. The real deal, accept no substitutions.

Minutes pass, and the quiet reflection of the empty house is replaced by the hustle and bustle of arriving family members, my Uncle’s family on my Fathers side. We get to see them once or twice a year and it’s always a pleasure. Food is being prepared, Frank is crooning White Christmas. The holiday is in full swing.

More minutes pass. Some semblance of quiet returns as the children go down for their naps and the various family members settle in front of laptops to while away the quiet hour or so that the kids are asleep. I return to my holiday contemplations as my talented friend Thomas Dirk plays away on the Itunes list, an introductory showing for the family.

I must admit that while I find joy in many things this season, I take very little in the holiday itself. It’s so broken now, a cacophony of chaotic meanderings and trying my best to involve the children in all aspects while maintaining my own sanity. I must sleep tonight in a place I simply do not like being, but I solider on for the sake of the kids, that is the reason for the season, making sure they feel loved and cared for. I shall be apt to the task.

A face passes into my mind as it has so often of late. I yearn for a moment, pine slightly, and smile softly remembering nuanced phrases and inviting smiles of recent evenings past. So strange how little has happened the way I planned it to this time last year. How happy I am that it did not. And how adamant I am to make no more plans for tomorrow, no more promises for days to come. I shall recline happily on my laurels and let the cosmos swish my path before me, this way and that, never sure of which end I shall meet or who I shall pass on the way. I am content for now, complications, temptations, predications and all. I feel healthy in mind and spirit, and I feel something delicious is just around the corner. And still the path winds before me around bends I cannot shape. Aye me, the sun is shining brightly these days, but I can always use a good tan.

Such thinly veiled metaphor, so my forte. And here I sit, now in silence, the music put to slow manual fade and now gone. I think on the day and the holiday on the morrow, I shall not sleep well tonight I fear, such is the way of these things. In the afternoon of the day itself I shall return home with my children where they are surely to be greeted by the wondrous surprises I have planned for them and those of their loving Grandparents as well. The smiles on their faces shall be reflected in mine. Though I long for the end of this holiday season I can only take joy in their joy.

And the New Year once again reaches out to me with her slender inviting digits and coy come hither smiles. But that dear friends is a tale for another time. So I will leave you with a verse posted by my good friend and ONE Chillicothe field commander Chris Cooper:

Not by churches, states, or guns,

But through a maiden’s lowly son…

Baby Jesus,

When you dream,

Do you see a world redeemed?

A planet free from

Hate and war,

Where need and

Hunger are no more?

Baby Jesus,

Through your birth,

Help us to

Renew the earth,

To find our

Innocence again,

And share your peace

With all.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Joyful Kwanzaa, and a festive Yule to all our varied and diverse readers. Your support and encouragement over the past year has been like water in the deserts of old. We look forward to a great 2008. We shall rock out with… well… you know.

One Love dear readers,

~Joshua

_______________________________________________________________

Epilogue:

The stockings are hung from the chimney with care. And the house slumbers about me. It is Christmas day as I type this, and the wee hours of silence bring with them, as ever they do, reflection and contemplation. It is my routine; I nestle comfortably into it as I have in times past. But things are different now. The paradigm shifts, the dynamic changes, and the New Year mocks me with its indifferent uncertainties as the current one burns out its fuse.

Have I become so comfortable in uncertainty? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps it is merely the way of things which I embrace. I ponder the coming year, the road yet traveled. As I do so I imagine a scent fills the air about me, like something out of Poe an unseen censor swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkle on the tile floor. It enwraps me as it has so many times before; it fills me with all the sensory memory attached to the slender frame whose name it bears. My back tenses, and my fingers ache to reach, reach for that who has infiltrated the pieces of my oft broken heart. The shining face of light that gathers those pieces, ever slowly, ever meticulously bit by small gleaming bit, and having laid them together in an order known only to her she knits steadily. Shards to bits, bits to chunks, chunks to pieces, pieces to whole, little by little and steady as the rising sun. I am healing, feeling healthy, full of vim and vigor and ready, oh so ready for the charge at the coming of dawn.

And the New Year beckons to me, her coy smile tempting me, teasing me with uplifted eyes and down turned looks. Oh how I know her tricks, her hollow promise, all too well… And yet… Here I stand, and I want to believe her again, take her hand once more and say to the world “This is my year.” Oh sweet temptress, oh fruit of the loins of father time what have you of me? What promise shall I proffer for your embrace. Lead me not into the darkness once again. Let us bury this hatchet, address the elephant in the room, lets have makeup sex for once. Cunning temporal maiden, be ye kind to me. Lets not ever fight again baby.

My stock is on the rise; my uphill battle has crested the top. There am I happy? Yes, and grateful. Indebted am I to a handful of very primary players. My brother the artist, the Sugar and Sunshine, the strait but sarcastic jack of all trades, the yuppy metrosexual, and the muse abandoned. Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa.

And my children slumber with visions of sugar plumbs and the dawn will come all too soon and a whirlwind of unwrapping and playing with commence. A menagerie of glee will ensue, and somehow it will have all been worth it. They have that effect. They are beautiful you know, beyond the scope of what I can explain; they are kind souls with great potential. And it is that statement that scares me so; fills me with apprehension unimaginable. Will I be enough for them? Will I fail them as I have failed myself and others in times gone by? Will I hurt them? God forbid… But there it is. Even if I try every day, even if I do my best, what if… what if… I try to put such thoughts out of my mind. I am a good father by all accounts but it is hard not to question the outcome. I truly worry that I will no be enough stability to stabilize them. I hope so.

It comes again. The thought, the grey fog, the desire to plan. Fight it old bean, stomp it back into the crevasse. No promises spoken, no promises kept, don’t forget it. But there is a desire that wells up in me, and fight as I may it grows each day. I’ve taken a dive down the rabbit hole before and I nearly broke my neck, I remember the sting of it, I fear it as an oarsman fears the lash. But there does it overtake me and I fall… But how now what is this, it’s different now. Where is the dread, the apprehension, where is the shoe waiting to drop, where is the hand waiting to cross my face with a smack? Where is that feeling in the pit of my stomach that this shit is just not gonna work out for me? Surely… it must be there some where… It always has been… But no, my reservations have abandoned me, my obsessions flee, and my self defeating idiom takes the week off. This is strange for me to feel so healthy about something so emotionally complicated. Wow… so that’s what it feels like to not fuck yourself up about something all the time. It feels… what’s the word? Delicious.

And the New Year beckons with her come hither stare.

Slumber awaits.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at and is filed under J.J. Sunshine's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the
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