on
12/22/2001
I forget what I wrote at this time last year. Everything before September seems irrelevant.
Three weeks ago I gave a girl the address of the Space Toast Page. Two weeks ago I missed half a date with her. One week ago I called her while I was nearby for a cup of coffee, found her to be sick, and left it at "some other time."
I haven't updated the page since I first gave her the address.
This is relevent for only one reason: hope.
I had a brainstorm last night at an inconvenient hour (which translated into several minutes of probably incoherent micro-audiocasette tape). I realized what the animation I've been planning needs to be about, and how to accomplish the theme. That theme is faith in the future.
It's Christmas. (Well, it will be in 25 minutes.) Rain has been falling on the snow all day, and it's been in the fourties. Nothing in the weather pertains to the Christmas spirit; indeed, it's been hard to get into it this year, for various reasons I won't explore here, but several days ago the weather was more than appropriate. I'd like to describe why before I go to bed.
There's an advent calendar in this house, that I've recently learned is Danish. It's a clever contraption that lays flat when on its back, but falls open three-dimensionally. It shows a section of a seaside village. Santa is down center, standing in a rowing dingy, handing out presents. All the villagers in evidence are children--there are only children and Santa Clause in this world--and all are engaged in their individual activities. Several are unloading a cargo net of presents from the hold of a ship. Across the bottom, a tiny tugboat tows two inflatable boats loaded with presents and children. It's difficult not to use superlatives to describe how happy this scene is.
Pull the tab, and a crane lifts the presents from the ship's hold. A fish appears and disappears in the cold water. Santa lifts a gift from his bag, with a resplendant smile. The ship's propellor turns.
I remember studying this calendar, when I was younger, where it sat on the edge of the old player piano. I remember feeling the cold of the water--green and choppy, with bits of ice floating in it. Now, years later, I understand what I could only feel then.
The water is what makes it work. Everyone in this village is happy, but it's not hollow sentiment. They're all engaged in what they are, from the boys working the cargo net to the girl in the background waving to us, and somehow the smiles work because of the water. That cold, cold open water is the genesis of all love.
Perhaps we don't love because we have, but we love because, for another year, we haven't lost.
There I stood, not far from here, looking down at the lake, some days ago, watching the snow flurries fall on open water, when I formed the kernel of this essay. Snow falling on choppy, slate grey waves is a kind of futility. It's the easy atrophy that's always there, the empty space between everything active in our lives. We have so much to lose, and, paradoxically perhaps, it's a comfort. That's what the feeling of Christmas is to me. Christmas isn't when we see that we have so much; Christmas is when we most acutely feel what we haven't lost.
Merry Christmas everyone (and yes, I'm now eleven minutes into it).
Touch the Toast