Okay, enough for the moment with the gloom and doom, appropriate as it has been during the holiday season.
So, aside from world peace, what else am I wishing in vain for in the new year, immortality apparently being out of the question. I’m just hoping to stay connected in the time that’s left — to my wife in particular, and, in a less profound way, to everyone else, imagining myself at times to be like a bee, a transporter of pollen, a strategic striker.
Though today the strategic striker’s idle, not that he wants to be, it’s just that it’s Christmas. What to do? Ah, I know, watch “The Ref.” You know, the movie where she says, “I’m slipper socks, medium.”
Interestingly, we’ve come to a point in our lives when slipper socks and underwear are wildly welcomed at Christmas, fingerless gloves in my case, so that I can take notes whenever outdoors in the winter or at baseball games in the spring when spectators in the stands sit mummified in blankets.
Mary used to think a co-worker was after my job, but he told her not to worry, that he was no fool, that he had no desire to freeze his ass off, as Jack did, while watching baseball games, tennis matches, and track meets during Bonac spring.
Well, I’ve made my bed, and I shouldn’t complain. As for the weather, November, rainy and raw in the past, was wonderful, and here it is Christmas Day and it’s as balmy as you’d want. I didn’t even wear a jacket, only a sweater and a scarf, as O’en and I walked around the neighborhood.
Would that all neighborhoods in the world were as peaceful as this one. You could have played tennis outdoors here on Christmas Day. Maybe some did — or baseball for that matter. And I wouldn’t have needed my fingerless gloves. Simply breathing was energizing.
So, buoyed also by the fact that I had the day before, during a stopover at the One Stop market, been made the beneficiary of four story ideas in about five minutes — Christmas gifts, “pollen” to this bee — I was ready to get back in the game.