wheeeee... east coast SNOW!

Now this is more like it. Glad I don't have anywhere to go today!
I hope it piles up all the way to my 9th floor window. I could jump out and slide all the way to the Washington Monument.

Ah Christmas!

Shopping, shopping, shopping! Heat those credit cards up 'til they glow, would ya please?! ..and add a little stress just to top it all off, OK? We'll worry about paying off the extra load next month when Visa sends to us their "Minimum Amount Due".
But for now, buy, baby, BUY! whoo hooo!

I went to the mall the other day not only to buy some flannel sheets (love flannel sheets in the winter time, warm, fuzzy, enveloping a body with instant warmth) but also to mingle among the throngs of holiday shoppers.
(Now why the hell would I do that!?)

The malls at this time of the year make me imagine what it must be like inside an ant colony. (I used to be an ant, you know)
Everybody is busy going this way and that, up, down, left, right, store to store to find if not THE perfect gift at least one that is useful (for men) and romantic (for women) and fun if a kid.
Good people dutifully and briskly walking hither and yon with their bags of goodies and gifts and who knows what else.
I go to the mall a couple times before each Christmas, sit on the bench, legs outstretched, ankles crossed and eat an ice cream cone as the throngs cascade around me, veering around my outstretched legs.

I do this for myself of course, just to remember the time that I too did the same scurrying about as everyone in front and behind me is doing.

I remember once a distant time ago, another life ago, that I set about to find a specific gift but was having big-time trouble in locating it in any number of stores. (I think it was a particular multi-functional "Walkman" radio for Josh )
As I was fast-walking in the mall that Christmas Eve afternoon I came up behind a person who was slow walking and I thought, almost said out loud to her, "Get the fuck out of my way!".
I was finally able to get around her, like a car trying to pass on a busy road, glancing with disdain at the side of her face as I passed her and sped on ahead in my quest to find the requested gift.
I never did find the right radio/recorder. Popular item no doubt and so bought a lesser version, spending 40 bucks for a gift guaranteed to disappoint, as it did.

Echos of the past does so often influence our spirit-presence in the now-world. The older we get it seems the greater the reverberations from our own vasty deep.

And now..?...
HA!
No! Wait..Double that: HA HA!
I sit on the mall bench, eating my ice cream, participating in an in-the-moment savoring of my escape from those times. Re-experiencing the sage-old advice to "Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence." (Desiderata )

Malls are eternally all alike in their essence and in this similar scene-of-the-crime a sense of my freedom from the holiday shopping madness that overtakes us in the two weeks before Christmas comes upon me.
Freedom from our obligatory buying of gifts for other people at precisely this time of the year.. is wonderfully renewed.
I leave the busy ant hill with the slightest of smile and walk slowly back to the car much the same as that women walked slowly in front of me in some mall a distant time ago.
I do not turn around to see if any are disturbed at not being able to pass by me.

(Now before any of you reading this jump all over me for not participating in the gifting ritual, let me add my asterisk to that way of seeing/being: if there were children in my life at this time my attitude would certainly be different in that I have always maintained that "Christmas is for the kids" and I still do harbor that attitude.)

But c'mon folks.. we're adults here, aren't we? AREN'T WE?
Do I really want or need to buy someone something (often anything!) and do I need to receive a present of something that I probably could care less about?


For me that answer is"no".. I do not need to give a present in pretty paper to those I love nor do I need to get a present from those that, without any kind of proof positive, care as much for my own well-beingness. Gifts that I give to others and gifts that I receive from others occur throughout the whole year and these real gifts to and from ourselves to others are never wrapped in any kind pretty paper with "to" and "from" tags.

Patti's attitude was exactly the same as my own, of which I was always thankful to her for that. Our giving to one another of the "no-gift" gift, was our Christmas Gift to each other. We were (still are) one another's Gift.
We had nothing to prove to one another. Love was enough. Love is enough.

If anyone is reading this, I would wish for you that kind of real Gift.
But only if it's something that you would really like. It appears that many folks do enjoy the traffic and the mall and the stress of finding the perfect gift and often spending big bucks that they don't have all for the payoffs that occur on Christmas eve and morning.
It appears that most folks do and I am in a tiny minority.

We pursue happiness [and unhappiness] in a so many ways, but occasionally, even I when it suits my fancy, go against such mighty social pressures [like buying everyone a present] by deliberately not doing what everybody else is doing.
In any case...
Merry Christmas to all and as they say, to all a very good night. (and maybe even treat yourself to some flannel sheets) :-)b

Ready for flying on a shoreline of Martha's Vineyard (sept 09)

THE MOUSE THAT WOULDN'T

I recently received an email from our good friend Matthew-Daniel Stremba, Jedi-Master of the literary vignette, short story and parlor play, the only Stremba in Baltimore and who surely must also be the incarnation of Edgar Allen Poe's lighter side.
With his permission I have reprinted his missive for your enjoyment.

* * *


"Caught a glimpse of her just twice. Gray fur flashing along a line perpendicular to my lateral peripheral vision.

What better time to consider a mouse? I say right now—(1) it's between the two St. Nicholas Days (today, and 13 days hence, 19 December); (2) it's during the commercial Christmas thing that's been cranking-up since before Black Friday; (3) and now when even the grimmest municipal offices pretend joy with cheap stock no-brand holiday hangings. It's time.


I've been imagining ONE individual celibate mouse that scurries back and forth between two houses, ours and the next-door neighbor's. Informed by me that her mouse was making uninvited visits into our house, neighbor lady asked: "What would you like me to do? Get an exterminator?" Well, no—just keep your mouse fed well enough so she'd have no need to intrude into our kitchen. Such a pain, you know, to find mouse droppings on the counter. For one thing, I grind the morning coffee there and wouldn't want to mistake a freakin' fecal part for a dark-roast coffee bean. And excrement or no, who knows where the creature's wee feet have trod before galloping along the sink-top?

You're wondering, dear Reader, why I stick with the idea of a she-mouse. Well, if this mouse is indeed celibate, that's so much easier to live with if she's a she. You just naturally feel so sorry for a male celibate, you know? Makes telling the story very very difficult. But, now, maybe it's a whole family—not always the same mouse either glimpsed in body or detected in her production. In which case, obviously, celibacy is no longer a player in the story. A tribe of incestuous mice?

My fiddle teacher lives in a much better district, stand-alone houses nowhere near any train tracks. In fact, the only public transportation he and his neighbors know is the taxi-cab. No thundering buses. And no routes nearby preferred by emergency vehicle drivers pressing their harrying horns and screaming sirens. Anyhow, there in that classy neighborhood, even a fiddle master has mice. (A mouse is no respecter of social class.) And teacher wonders how this state of affairs originated—this plague of mice—given that his block's rife with cats. The explanation was obvious to me. Every aristocrat quartered there has cats but him—so, naturally, yes, his house has become a mouse's safe haven, a place of refuge, sanctuary. No mouse in her right mind would pass up the opportunity.

We, too, here in a block of rowhouses, have no cat—not since Mamura died a year ago. Nor does our next-door neighbor. Never did. But of the 25 residential units on this street, only seven keep cats. A mouse here has rather free range to locate a home to settle in and stir things up. And our next-door neighbor's cat-free house has so much more besides to suit a mouse-ideal.

To manage this matter of the mouse not staying firm with the better choice—i.e. next door—I purchased a Have-A-Heart trap. Cost me a hefty 17 bucks! That's how much I can't bear to think of the sticky paper solution or the instant kill of the traditional original snap trap. The Have-A-Heart is excellently designed. It caters to the habit of mice to insert themselves into tight spaces almost as if they had some competitive streak—"how tight an opening can I overcome?" Once squeezed inside, a mouse finds exit impossible. Crawl-in, honey—no crawling back out.

But a householder opting for the Have-A-Heart has got to be attentive. Pick that tin box up and take it out back behind the neighbor's house, open it up and let the little critter loose into the grass. Because I am, obviously, such a softy, I've taken the box out a number of times, not sure whether I heard from within a shake or a rattle—taken it out for fear a trapped live mouse might expire horribly from hunger and thirst, stress, loneliness, major disappointment with life, loss of faith in Divine Providence. Each time I've taken it out and opened it—nothing.

The Have-A-Heart's been in place now going on three months. Without result. But very near it, once, twice a week, the mouse turds appear.

Maybe we should consider housebreaking her? Or them?

Happy Nick Day!

Yours unimproved, keeping his ear to the kitchen counter,
Matthew-Daniel, the Only Stremba in Baltimore"

You can find more from Matthew at
Storeyman Live!
Anyone who has any advice for Matthew on catching his elusive mouse (or mice) please let us all know in the comment section.

bill
ps: This photo is of a mouse that patti and I captured one night with our homemade triggered gravity trap. The table the trap was set on is glass so I could take poor mousey's picture looking up from below.
We released her away from the farm house.