music: Sigur Ros- Hauf/Heim
There is something about this time of year that tears at me, rubs me raw, makes me very unhappy on several levels. I’ve spent the past week or so in an irritable, discontent headspace that has colored this so-called vacation in unsavory ways. I’ve been discouraged, restless, exasperated. Full of energy, but without direction or purpose. Craving solitude, but quite lonely. That I have had the chance to catch up on sleep and have had the time to feed myself properly, and that I know that my affect inevitably dips during the final weeks of the calendar year have been my saving graces.
Why does this happen? What is it about the so-called “Holidays” that drive me to wish myself a million miles away from my own life? This year is not an isolated event, not by any stretch. There is something intrinsically…depressing about this stretch of time, and as I sit in the middle of it for the 29th time I can’t say it’s gotten any easier to wade through the murky waters that are the Holidays. This year I spent a good deal of time trying to dissect the subject with the hopes that I could arrive at a meaningful cause for such a downturn in my flow.
First and foremost, to my analysis, is my birthday on the 24th of the month. There are the mini-explosions of existential meltdown that accompany me turning one year older, and those steady reminders of my limited time on this planet do not really cheer me up. I should be thankful on my birthday: thankful for my health, that I have made it through another year, thankful that I have had opportunities most people do not have and have enjoyed relative good fortune, thankful for my mother who allowed herself to be sliced open such that I could breathe air for myself and bask in the light of the world, thankful thankful thankful. Instead I find myself quite the opposite: discouraged. Discouraged that youth is quickly becoming a thing to be spoken of in the past tense, and that whatever divine clock that keeps track of the rest of my days as David Taus is moving inexorably towards zero. Because of the date on which I was born, my birthday is overshadowed by someone else’s birthday — most people have heard of him; he was nailed to a cross about 2000 years ago — and because of this other guy and the special brand of spirituality he preached the country decides to whip itself into an economic frenzy, buying buying buying consuming consuming consuming consuming. This generally happens to coincide with travel to family far away or exotic vacation spots, so as a result most everybody I’d like to spend my birthday with is elsewhere, predisposed with the great American spirituality of capitalism. I’d like to have the option to drown myself in some degree of consumerism, to at least take myself out to a moderately nice dinner on my birthday, but in the greatest of ironies I find the rest of the world has closed for business on December 24th. I am really left to myself on my birthday, and try as I might to see that solitude as a gift, I struggle mightily.
Secondly, and hardly coincidently, is Christmas. If I were someone who celebrated the holiday, or even had the option to be part of the culture that celebrates it, I might see it slightly differently, but I’m not so sure. As it is, Christmas is the party that I am not invited to, but everyone else is And the whole universe reeks of Christmas: decorations in the store windows, muzak in the elevators, sweaters and velvet stocking caps on the populous. Christmas becomes part of the common greeting between strangers, becomes the reason to do this and that, becomes the excuse to do this and that. It’s inescapable, and from my vantage point on the outside, its existence and role in the country’s fabric is largely one of economics. Christmas is pitched as that other guy’s birthday (not me, the other guy from 2000 years ago), but the funny thing is that all scholarly analysis tells us that he was born in the spring, and in a different city from what the holiday purports. Furthermore, the jolly fat man in the red suit, his entourage of reindeer, and the presents he drops has a connection with the foundations of Christianity that is tenuous at best. And the kicker, even in the age of environmental awareness, is that celebrants of this spiritual occasion take it upon themselves to cut down upwards of 30 million trees (remnants of a pagan solstice rite appropriated by Christian missionaries) and put them out on the curb a week later. What is left of Christmas, then, is buying, giving, consuming, expecting. I wouldn’t want part of it even if I had the option, but just being surrounded so completely by Christmas is enough.
Beyond that, the natural rhythms of the planet are screaming “Hibernate!” to most large mammals this time of year. It is the coldest time of year, the time with the least amount of daylight, and in many places the time when the first snows hit. My instincts have most definitely been to crawl under my blankets and wait it out.
And this year certain specifics have made my December quite difficult. I have every hope that these circumstances will work themselves out in January (more on this late-breaking story as it develops), but the hurdle between now and January is to wait out the Holidays, which make for a period of stasis in all my efforts to rectify what has been dragging me down for the past couple months. So I keep to myself, weather the onslaught of consumerism, phototropism, existentialism. It’s been difficult, and especially so because I never really had the chance to solidify New Years plans that I am excited about. Those close to me who I would choose to share my last day of the year with, are far away, already committed to something I am not a part of. The drop-back plan, which is turning out to have incredible amounts of potential, is a pilgrimage to Yosemite. It is an attempt to contact that which inspired me to come out this way in the first place, an alternative to the inevitably mediocre party I might attend in the city with one-offs and acquaintances, and a means by which I can take stock of all that has happened in 2007 and clear some mental cobwebs for the start of 2008.
2008. I welcome it grandly. It will prove to be a most interesting year, full of incredible transitions and potentially some big decisions that will divert my life’s stream in significant ways. But not yet; I first have to get through The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. With this much struggle, I expect some really significant progress.