Holeeday
I don’t celebrate Christmas anymore because a) I see no reason to and b) I have no relatives in town who celebrate it either. Jesus wasn’t born in December and I can appreciate His incarnation and birth 365 1/4 days a year. But the season does inspire wonder and contemplation; for example, how do people get to the point of wearing poofy reindeer antlers on their heads while working their nine-to-fives? Why don’t we invent new holidays after awhile? Can we get rid of the Santa Claus thing already? Why would people lie to their kids about a mythical character and think it’s cute to see them fall for it?
But there is also something lovely about Xmas, and that is, I get two paid days off. Certainly something to celebrate. But eventually I will have to return to work, and I may get asked what I did for Christmas and I will have absolutely nothing to report. So instead of saying “Nothing,” or, “I hung out by myself at home,” I’ll just say, “Let me forward you the link.” And since I’m sure they will really want to know, here it is, my amazing, excitement-packed day of the eve of Christmas:
I spent the morning busying myself with laundry, cleaning, and organizing my canyon hut. It was a gorgeous day, so a little after 2:00 I donned capris, a t-shirt, a cap, and wrist guards, and took my skateboard a few short streets to Balboa Park where I just love to cruise. There’s a mile or so stretch with just the right slope to weave down the wide walkway. Toward the end it gets a little faster, and I noticed that if you crouch down, the lack of wind resistance really does make a difference in speed. And that’s what we’re all about, see. As long as we can do it without another sprained wrist.
It actually almost felt hot. But the sun was beautiful and warming and I was weaving and grinning and remembering how cool it is to live here.
I passed a girl walking three beautiful, brushed Pomeranians in a perfect line. The one on the right had a red bow, the one on the left ad a green bow, and the one in the middle had nothing. Besides the natural question of why the middle pup got gypped, if I weren’t anti-Xmas pomp and anti-animal-pomp I’d say those pups brought me some holiday cheer. But I am, so they didn’t. They were cute, though.
After awhile I stopped to eat a Probar under a tree. Balboa Park is full of multitudinous tree types; tall, short, stumpy, wide, gnarly. I stared up into the tree for a few moments, contemplating nothing in particular.
Yes. I took a picture of the tree.
On my way back, as I was about to cross the bridge on Fourth and Quince, I noticed that someone had just put up a community library at the roadside next to the bridge. It was maybe two feet tall and three feet wide. Such community libraries were started a few years ago by some guy who owned a few books and wanted to encourage literacy in an urban area, or more likely, just thought it was a cool way to share his books. The idea has taken root and you can see them popping up in random places. I originally thought that the primary idea was to bring a resurgence of literary culture to the ghetto, and judging by some of the characters I see around my hood, maybe that’s about right. Anyway, this one is a nice little painted stand with a sloped, tiled roof with a glass door and a few books inside that anyone can help themselves to. Take a book, return a book is the general idea. So I scanned the titles as cars gunned it behind me. I moved to the bridge steps and read a few pages of “The Wednesday Sisters,” a fiction book about five women who develop friendships and decide to write a book together. If it were nonfiction, I probably would have loved it. But in my perusal I garnered just enough cheesiness to be repulsed; plus, I don’t have time to waste educating myself on one woman’s imagination. Give me something that actually happened, great; I can learn more about people and human nature and the like. And there’s just a certain intrigue about truth.
The other book that looked ok was “The Debt to Pleasure,” a discourse about international experiences of food. It’s a rather pretentious thing written by someone I have a suspicion I wouldn’t like if I met him in person. His writing smacks of smugness and conceit and just by reading a few pages you get the feeling that this guy thinks way too highly of himself and his conceptions of life around him. That’s probably what I sound like too, but who cares? I decided on this book because it was nonfiction, my current genre of choice, and because it was speckled with some unusual vocabulary words, which presents a welcome challenge to us simpletons.
I went home, book in hand, and sat on my porch for a bit with my lawn chair and wrote for a bit. I love my canyon. Shrubs with red berries wave before a backdrop of sweeping bamboo; low-growing shrubs litter the canyon floor, and three tall eucalyptus trees shoot up into the bright blue backdrop. One of them is actually dead, but it’s still a pretty tree skeleton in between two lush, swaying enormities with tiny birds flitting in and amongst the branches.
Then I got to cooking. I like to experiment; this one was grass-fed lamb ribs, baked with rosemary and oil in a bed of basil and sage-infused potatoes and carrots. Now if that doesn’t sound pretentious, nothing does. But it turned out delicious. While I was at it, I roasted some butternut squash and toasted the seeds in soy sauce.
Yes. I took a picture of dinner. No, I did not post it on Facebook. I will not post such ridiculous things on Facebook. That’s what the blog is for.
While I was waiting for it everything to cook, I had some appetizers and even poured myself a bit of champagne I found in my fridge that some kind soul had brought to some past gathering at my place. I lifted my glass, a cool blue asymmetrical artsy thing I got from the Art Institute of Chicago. “A toast,” I said, “…to Christmas Eve.” Then I cracked up.
Truly, I have gone batty in my bliss of sweet solitude.
Xmas morning was even better. I did absolutely nothing.
Sonya Wilson's Blog 
January 17, 2014 at 6:42 am
Loved it!