i don’t know why

maybe its because i just don’t know what to get people. maybe its because i have made no $$$ this month. maybe its because its just not what christmas used to be about.

me and my brother would start planning christmas eve about two months in advance. we would draw up elaborate plans for the purchase of piles of candy, to be consumed as we played rented video games. we would draw maps of the house and work out ways to sneak out and catch santa (or watch mom as we got older). it went so far as to know which boards in the hallways creaked when you walked on them, and practicing ways to walk ninja like out.

i still have the journal we kept from one christmas eve, i must have been 9 or 10, and we did checks every 15 minutes, with status reports, notes on how many presents, what the current mom situation was, where we hid out. et cetera. we wished we had walkie talkies and we never DID get a pair. we could hardly contain the excitement when it looked like it was time, and mom would go to bed. but she always took her sweet time, sometimes even falling asleep on the couch.

when she finally did go to bed we would wait 2 minutes (we told ourselves it was a half hour) and then sneak out. that moment, the flashlights reflecting off unopened presents, the stockings stuffed full, the crisp cool air in the big living room… it was palpable and brilliant. and then one of us would plug in the christmas tree lights, and their glow added a solemn beauty to the whole scene. we would find the santa presents, written in a mysterious style, all caps and almost… primitive like, FROM SANTA.

also, leading up to christmas we took each ritual very seriously, the hanging of the lights outside, the placement of the ornaments on the christmas tree. tyler let us know of this cool trick where you could lay underneath the tree and stare up into the lights sparkling against the ornaments and be in your OWN world entirely. tyler never had as elaborate plans, mainly cuz his brother was too young to conspire with him, and we always found that to be really strange.

it was cool to make things in elementary school for gifts, the aluminum foil ornaments, the stuff from woodshop that said your name in cursive. it was cool to kind of fall into the advent calendars in awe, and i loved the baby jesus scenes with mini porcelaine statues. it all seemed so magical, and i suppose the distinctive feeling was that these things, these THINGS were actually a place i could go to… somewhere special, only once a year. when christmas was over it was such a let down, even if you made mom and dad keep the tree up until it was hazardously toasted and dry.

i guess this is when people start thinking having kids would be a cool idea… that joy is so much… more exciting than the stuff i’m kind of feeling right now. like, having to beg to get christmas off from the restaurant, but still having to compromise and WORK, can you believe that WORK on that once sacred childhood night christmas eve. and wanting to get people you love things that they really want cuz you do care about them, but kind of remembering a time when what they wanted was something much less simple than an item… they wanted a gift. you gave a gift. you got a gift.

i suppose i am a bit disappointed in myself, as i have been since age 17 or so, for not really feeling the magic as much. i know that i want to, but now i don’t even know if i know how… it scares me. how to fall into a world and live it, and be ecstatic from the fact that that private world exists. i mean, i don’t smoke pot anymore and don’t want to… i used to think that pot did that for me, but pot is a kind of downer, it just is escapism on a non imaginative level.

my childhood was so important to me… i knew it at the time. i hope it doesn’t come back and devour me, how strongly i felt then. i would like to be the same person, and worry less about selling cars and paying bills.

to quote morrissey (and i’m sure i’m taking it out of context) “i’ve seen this happen in other people’s lives, and now its happening in mine”

well, that was depressing. just had to get that out there. i mean, can you relate? am i missing something here? i want more magic. AND i’m really happy to be at this point in my life too, but… do you know what i mean?