Saturnalia, Wood Tigers, and John Keats
Happy Holidays, Yule, Christmas, and a hearty “Saturnalia.” I take my holidays seriously, not because of any belief in the divine but for the tangible warmth of friends, family, and feasts.
Notes for a sketch of a holiday at the parents:
Knock on the wreath-adorned door. Door opens and there’s a blast of heat, the smell of pine needles, and the vocals of Eartha Kitt. My mother, an X-ray technologist who bears a striking resemblance to Audrey Hepburn, is dressed in solar-flare red. My father, a salesman who bears a striking resemblance to me, has already begun depleting the table of appetizers; the man takes his food and wine with a fetish-level of seriousness.
(As a side-note, my friend Cortney has recently pointed out that I bear a striking resemblance to Lord Byron)
The dinner table looks like the spilled-over contents of the Horn of Plenty. My parents have never been wealthy, but our household has always embraced each holiday with fierce zeal. My personal favorite is New Year’s Eve, and we are already setting the tone with a meaningful group reflection on the twilight of 2009 as we raise our champagne toast.
Year of the Tiger. That’s what we’re moving into. The year of my birth animal, actually. (And I’m sure a gaggle of editors will note this zodiac animal while continuing their Circus Maximus against a certain professional golfer.)
Ironically enough, in Chinese tradition your birth animal is also associated with one of the Five Elements: Water, Air, Fire, Earth, and Wood. The elements cycle just like the animals do. So what am I, according to the precise machinations of these cosmic wheels?
A Wood Tiger.
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My poem “Night Hunt” has just been published in the latest issue of Illumen; my copy came by mail a few days ago. It’s about a restless sleeper who decides to enter the semi-mystical world of a foggy night… leaving behind the prison of alarm clocks, TVs, iPods, and other banal ingredients of a banal universe. Slipping into the shoes of Thoreau and Blake for a few hours.
On a bittersweet note, the popular and very worthy magazine Atomjack has closed its doors; yet another victim to the arena of fast-food attention spans and the media that encourages them. The Fates have snipped another digital web-strand into history.
Yours truly has the honor of being the final author to appear in their pages. My story “The Titans of Camp Four” forms the last word of their whimsical run. I wish the editorial staff all the best with their next venture.
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Notes for a sketch on how not to belong:
I was at the office three weeks ago. It doesn’t matter what kind of office, or what they do. It is an office – the archetypal corporate hive with hexagonal cubicles (for maximum storage of honey, I suppose) and narrow colorless aisles and water coolers and cafeterias that smell like old grease and disinfectant. The top bee brass summoned several corporate writers to a meeting.
Corporate America requires the creative man or woman to be a polyglot. You need to know the local language. While I sat in my chair, notebook in lap, I occasionally raised my hand to ask a corporatese question: “Do we know what the client’s hot buttons are for the upcoming strategy call to maximize our opportunity in the D.C. area?”
I don’t even know what that means. Or rather, I truly don’t care.
However, there are certain advantages to speaking the local dialect. Specifically, everyone was so certain that I was participating in the strategy session that no one bothered to glance at my notebook (on which I was dutifully scribbling.)
Scribbling what? A poem dedicated to Viking mythology.
Outside of my notebook the world was this:
Inside the web of orderly blue lines, however, was something more like this:
Merry Holidays.
Now reading: The Poetry of John Keats
Now watching: Every film by James Cameron, excluding Pirahna 2: The Spawning.
