i traveled a river of concrete in a machine, you traveled an ocean of air in a machine, babies crying, inconsolably, you said i said, eustachean tubes aren’t meant for 30,000 feet.
i am not meant for this, neither are you, neither are they.
not the opposite of joy on Christmas eve but the false pursuit of it whatever is actually contrary to it even if we don’t know it when we see it. even if we refuse to know it when we see it.
if i allow myself to cry, he will see it on my face.
a version of this essay was first published December 8, 2015
“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man's hat, if you haven't got a penny, then, a half-penny will do, if you haven't got a half-penny, then God bless you.”
I went to the nearest Dollar Store to buy old-fashioned, stringy, silver tinsel for our christmas tree.
All that glitters is not silver or gold, is never ever golden, whether you buy your pretty ornaments or wrapping paper for a buck – or two at Dollar Tree, Walmart, Target, Macy’s or Saks for $5, $10, $30 or $50. The only difference is the retailer’s profit margin — very rarely is there a difference in quality when it comes to seasonal items, disposable items and sundries.
The season of peace and beauty feels very false once you know and remember to never forget that all those beautiful ornaments and decorations adorning almost every American home, restaurant or holiday venue are made by women, children, or men in sweatshops who are breathing in lead dust, paint fumes, plastic glitter, chemicals and pigments often for less than $30 per 12-hour shift; all that beautiful crap then warehoused, shipped, stocked and sold by non-living-wage, multi-job workers in the U.S.
Yet, while I’m there roaming the aisles or in the long line to check-out, I feel an overwhelming sense of community with my fellow city dwellers — the shoppers, the store’s workers and with all the workers of the World — particularly those in Yiwu, Zhezhang, China who are mass-producing a vast majority of all of this shit.
silver tinsel, aka Icicles, ironically & hilariously, still made in the USA!
I also feel an overwhelming revulsion of the systems of ‘growth’ and development: capitalism, consumerism, and human and natural resource “management” which are uniquely undeniable in the fluorescent, depressive uniformity of the minimally staffed chaos found in a busy, urban dollar store,
i am waiting for the bough to break — or, to be severed by proxy at my behest.
earlier this week on my daily walk-about, i noticed that a primary limb, the major artery, on a nearly 80’ tall and likely nearing 100 years-old, elm tree on the land i occupy, had cleaved and that the fracture was migrating down into the trunk — and dangerously so.
i don’t know the cause: if it was the abrupt shift in temperature to freezing here in southwest Michigan — or, if the tree was stressed from a standing-water-wet spring followed by a very dry summer, or if “it” is simply at the end of their life — all the elms here had unusually held onto an abundance of their prolific leaves until the fourth week of November.
no matter.
the matters:
the massive limb of the elm stretches high and precariously over the old barn, and depending on the wind direction, there’s a chance if it falls, it could clip the back of my house or take the whole tree down with it.
i await the tree surgery & removal crew. i am at their and the northerly and westerly gusts’ mercy.
in the meantime, i have also been wrestling with the possible choice of whether to have the crew amputate just the cleaved limbs — if the tree is in fact salvageable — or, to remove the entire tree at once instead of forestalling the inevitable.
all delusions were set out in the meadow for scavengers along with all the seeds she didn’t start this year she had prophetic dreams she barely touched her tarot he now lives entirely outside of her heart she showed up first, but only as her second, or third choice then, she died days later, in hospice, at 56, and presumably, knows now that she couldn’t take it with her, Egyptian-Pharaonic style blood and cultural descendants of holocaust survivors are revelling in an ongoing genocide and someone finally inspected his spots, but leopards cannot change theirs some of us, are just about ‘dat’ life, she re-learned others, lie to themselves about their innocence, or responsibility, including me, we are all stereotypes radical self-promotion and self-reinforcing mediocrity are apparently the new power couple, she didn’t make it to the Remedios Varo show at the Art Institute of Chicago – with, and on, purpose. her bones began to ache during sunlight, too, so that’s new, ”People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time.”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 