I miss you, Hockley. I love you.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
In Defense of The Santa Clause
Every night during the weeks leading up to Christmas I make myself a cup of tea, curl up with a blanket in a room full of books, and watch Christmas movies. Everything around me is quiet and dark. It's magical, and when my cat decides to grace me with her presence it's nothing short of miraculous.
Sometimes I think it's perfectly normal for an adult woman to indulge in the sheer volume of yuletide cinema that I do. I mean, it's Christmas. Who doesn't love twinkle lights and a hefty dusting of snow? Other times, though, I wonder if I ever progressed mentally past the age of five.
I was six when The Santa Clause came out, a paralyzingly shy little girl with wild hair who found solace in the pages of her picture books. I was a lucky kid. I had wonderful friends. I had a cool older brother who dressed up as a clown and made balloon animals at my birthday parties. I had parents who read me bedtime stories and made sure that I never closed my eyes at night without knowing that I was strong and beautiful. My days were consistent. I loved school. I grew up outwardly timid but inwardly confident that no one had a better life than I did.
It didn't take long for me to find in The Santa Clause what I hadn't even known I was looking for: something unbelievable in which to believe. That's not to say that I was wary of what couldn't be seen. On the contrary, I was a typical child and thus devoured my parents' fanciful tales of fairies who paid for lost teeth and a rabbit whose sole job was to hide candy for small children one day every year. But these stories were for everyone. Everyone who put a tooth under their pillow woke up a little richer. Everyone spent Easter skipping around the house shaking a pink plastic egg filled with jelly beans. I loved The Santa Clause because for me it was a specific, personal experience. Here was this astonishing place called the North Pole that supposedly no one but Santa and the elves ever saw, yet here it was, right in front of me. And here were the reindeer. And they really did fly. It was like my own little secret with Santa: They've never seen you, Santa, but I have.
The Santa Clause purists will scoff at my appreciation for the second movie, which many consider a blemish on the institution of Christmas. And if you haven't already rolled your eyes, this one's for you: I even love The Santa Clause 3, which I don't hesitate to admit is a horrible, horrible movie. One of the worst I've seen, in fact. But it's just so good. My tolerance of the Tim Allen Santa Clause franchise is simply astounding. Whereas the original was a private invitation to believe in what couldn't be proven, the sequels were validation that you weren't wrong to trust a story. However contrived, they were Christmas.
Movies, especially when you're young, have an extraordinary way of trapping a part of you inside them--not enough that you notice the absence, but enough that each time you watch them you recognize in the dialogue and the characters a piece of who you used to be. This is what I feel every Christmas when I watch The Santa Clause. It's the same North Pole, the same elves, the same reindeer. And there's six-year-old Olivia, her curls clipped back in red and green barrettes, mesmerized by a world no human but her had ever seen. That is why I watch: to remember for an hour and a half the girl who didn't know that all she wanted was something to believe.
Sometimes I think it's perfectly normal for an adult woman to indulge in the sheer volume of yuletide cinema that I do. I mean, it's Christmas. Who doesn't love twinkle lights and a hefty dusting of snow? Other times, though, I wonder if I ever progressed mentally past the age of five.
It didn't take long for me to find in The Santa Clause what I hadn't even known I was looking for: something unbelievable in which to believe. That's not to say that I was wary of what couldn't be seen. On the contrary, I was a typical child and thus devoured my parents' fanciful tales of fairies who paid for lost teeth and a rabbit whose sole job was to hide candy for small children one day every year. But these stories were for everyone. Everyone who put a tooth under their pillow woke up a little richer. Everyone spent Easter skipping around the house shaking a pink plastic egg filled with jelly beans. I loved The Santa Clause because for me it was a specific, personal experience. Here was this astonishing place called the North Pole that supposedly no one but Santa and the elves ever saw, yet here it was, right in front of me. And here were the reindeer. And they really did fly. It was like my own little secret with Santa: They've never seen you, Santa, but I have.The Santa Clause purists will scoff at my appreciation for the second movie, which many consider a blemish on the institution of Christmas. And if you haven't already rolled your eyes, this one's for you: I even love The Santa Clause 3, which I don't hesitate to admit is a horrible, horrible movie. One of the worst I've seen, in fact. But it's just so good. My tolerance of the Tim Allen Santa Clause franchise is simply astounding. Whereas the original was a private invitation to believe in what couldn't be proven, the sequels were validation that you weren't wrong to trust a story. However contrived, they were Christmas.Movies, especially when you're young, have an extraordinary way of trapping a part of you inside them--not enough that you notice the absence, but enough that each time you watch them you recognize in the dialogue and the characters a piece of who you used to be. This is what I feel every Christmas when I watch The Santa Clause. It's the same North Pole, the same elves, the same reindeer. And there's six-year-old Olivia, her curls clipped back in red and green barrettes, mesmerized by a world no human but her had ever seen. That is why I watch: to remember for an hour and a half the girl who didn't know that all she wanted was something to believe.
New URL Coming Soon!
Just so everyone knows, beginning on January 1st this blog will have a new URL: www.thoughtsofaroaminglogophile.blogspot.com
(Assuming, of course, that no one steals it before then. No one steal it before then)
(Assuming, of course, that no one steals it before then. No one steal it before then)
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Happy
This song is my newest obsession. I must have listened to it 30 times before I went to bed last night and I'm pretty sure I was singing it aloud in my sleep.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Why I Almost Left
I spent several hours today exploring the features of WordPress with every intention of switching over. After four years I was going to cheat on my blog with another blog. I selected my URL, my template, my color scheme, my header photo. I wrote my first post. I even clicked the option to allow virtual snow to fall on the home page until January 4th, which I guess is either when they predict they'll run out of virtual snow or when they're sure we've all perished in the impending apocalypse on Friday. So you see, I was all set to change.
But then night fell, as it has a habit of doing. Those who know me well know that my mind absorbs information more thoughtfully when everyone around me has gone to sleep. I began to think about everything I've gotten from my blog--everything it has allowed me to do and say, everyone with whom it has helped me keep in touch. It has seen me through two summers on Orcas Island, the second half of my college education, my year in Melbourne. It has tales of very un-Kosher Passovers and emotionally uncomfortable exchanges with strangers on public transportation. It explains why my relationship with my cat is the most complex I will likely ever have in my life. It's too dear to me. I just couldn't do it.
And so I come crawling back, prepared to hurl myself at Blogger's cyber feet and beg forgiveness for even entertaining the thought that I would somehow be a better person by discarding the past four years for the glitz of a new layout and virtual snow until January 4th. I have returned without ever really having left.
If you're curious, by the way, this was my "I'm moving up in the world" post on WordPress:
"Blogger has been good to me for the past four years. It helped me learn that my words have weight, that cyberspace is a vast dimension that belongs to everyone. I read back over my earliest posts there with gratitude (sandwiched between some hefty helpings of self-abasement), and have decided that it is time to move on.
"I am not one for New Year’s resolutions. I believe, with the part of my twenty-four-year-old soul that still lies awake on Christmas Eve listening for Santa, that every day is an opportunity to start over. Sure, January 1st is a great time to set goals for yourself, but so is March 7th or August 29th. This year, though, I’m compelled by an instinct I can’t explain to redefine myself in 2013. For one flawed reason or another I have let go of so many things that are important to me: people I love with whom I’ve lost touch, hobbies that were once my retreats but that I pushed aside and promptly forgot. I want to atone for my mistakes. I want to see new places and taste new foods and read new books. And I want to write all about it.
"Consider this jump to WordPress the first step in reestablishing my online presence. Here’s to a year of remembering what–and who–it is that makes me happy."
But then night fell, as it has a habit of doing. Those who know me well know that my mind absorbs information more thoughtfully when everyone around me has gone to sleep. I began to think about everything I've gotten from my blog--everything it has allowed me to do and say, everyone with whom it has helped me keep in touch. It has seen me through two summers on Orcas Island, the second half of my college education, my year in Melbourne. It has tales of very un-Kosher Passovers and emotionally uncomfortable exchanges with strangers on public transportation. It explains why my relationship with my cat is the most complex I will likely ever have in my life. It's too dear to me. I just couldn't do it.
And so I come crawling back, prepared to hurl myself at Blogger's cyber feet and beg forgiveness for even entertaining the thought that I would somehow be a better person by discarding the past four years for the glitz of a new layout and virtual snow until January 4th. I have returned without ever really having left.
If you're curious, by the way, this was my "I'm moving up in the world" post on WordPress:
"Blogger has been good to me for the past four years. It helped me learn that my words have weight, that cyberspace is a vast dimension that belongs to everyone. I read back over my earliest posts there with gratitude (sandwiched between some hefty helpings of self-abasement), and have decided that it is time to move on.
"I am not one for New Year’s resolutions. I believe, with the part of my twenty-four-year-old soul that still lies awake on Christmas Eve listening for Santa, that every day is an opportunity to start over. Sure, January 1st is a great time to set goals for yourself, but so is March 7th or August 29th. This year, though, I’m compelled by an instinct I can’t explain to redefine myself in 2013. For one flawed reason or another I have let go of so many things that are important to me: people I love with whom I’ve lost touch, hobbies that were once my retreats but that I pushed aside and promptly forgot. I want to atone for my mistakes. I want to see new places and taste new foods and read new books. And I want to write all about it.
"Consider this jump to WordPress the first step in reestablishing my online presence. Here’s to a year of remembering what–and who–it is that makes me happy."
P.S. Just for the record, Blogger, you're way less complicated.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Poetry Corner Monday
The Quilt
Larry Levis
I think it is all light at the end; I think it is air.
Those fields we drove past, turning to mud in April,
Those oaks with snow still roosting in them. Towns so small
Their entire economy suffered if a boy, late at night,
Stole the bar's only cue ball.
In one of them, you bought an old quilt, which, fraying,
Still seemed to hold the sun, especially in one
Bright corner, made from what they had available in yellow
In 1897. It reminded me of laughter, of you. And some woman
Whose faith in the goodness of the world was
Stubborn, sewed it in. "There now," she might as well
Have said, as if in answer to the snow, which was
Merciless. "There now," she seemed to say, to
Both of us. "Here's this patch of yellow. One field gone
Entirely into light. Goodbye..." We had become such artists
At saying good-bye; it made me wince to look at it.
Something at the edge of the mouth, something familiar
That makes the mouth turn down. An adjustment.
It made me wince to have to agree with her there, too,
To say the day itself, the fields, each thread
She had to sew in the poor light of 1897,
Were simply gifts. Because she must be dead by now, &
Anonymous, I think she had a birthmark on her cheek;
I think she disliked Woodrow Wilson & the war;
And if she outlived one dull husband, I think she
Still grew, out of spite & habit, flowers to give away.
If laughter is adult, an adjustment to loss,
I think she could laugh at the worst. When I think of you both,
I think of that one square of light in her quilt,
Of women, stubborn, believing in the goodness of the world.
How next year, driving past this place, which I have seen
For years, & steadily, through the worst weather, when
The black of the Amish buggies makes the snow seem whiter,
I won't even have to look up.
I will wince & agree with you both, & past the farms
Abandoned to moonlight, past one late fire burning beside
A field, the flame rising up against the night
To take its one solitary breath, even I
Will be a believer.
Larry Levis
I think it is all light at the end; I think it is air.
Those fields we drove past, turning to mud in April,
Those oaks with snow still roosting in them. Towns so small
Their entire economy suffered if a boy, late at night,
Stole the bar's only cue ball.
In one of them, you bought an old quilt, which, fraying,
Still seemed to hold the sun, especially in one
Bright corner, made from what they had available in yellow
In 1897. It reminded me of laughter, of you. And some woman
Whose faith in the goodness of the world was
Stubborn, sewed it in. "There now," she might as well
Have said, as if in answer to the snow, which was
Merciless. "There now," she seemed to say, to
Both of us. "Here's this patch of yellow. One field gone
Entirely into light. Goodbye..." We had become such artists
At saying good-bye; it made me wince to look at it.
Something at the edge of the mouth, something familiar
That makes the mouth turn down. An adjustment.
It made me wince to have to agree with her there, too,
To say the day itself, the fields, each thread
She had to sew in the poor light of 1897,
Were simply gifts. Because she must be dead by now, &
Anonymous, I think she had a birthmark on her cheek;
I think she disliked Woodrow Wilson & the war;
And if she outlived one dull husband, I think she
Still grew, out of spite & habit, flowers to give away.
If laughter is adult, an adjustment to loss,
I think she could laugh at the worst. When I think of you both,
I think of that one square of light in her quilt,
Of women, stubborn, believing in the goodness of the world.
How next year, driving past this place, which I have seen
For years, & steadily, through the worst weather, when
The black of the Amish buggies makes the snow seem whiter,
I won't even have to look up.
I will wince & agree with you both, & past the farms
Abandoned to moonlight, past one late fire burning beside
A field, the flame rising up against the night
To take its one solitary breath, even I
Will be a believer.
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