Somebody to Talk to At The Office Party

I've staked out a spot by the fried chicken station to people watch (since I won't be eating any chicken). The guy with the impressive beard is there, too, and we get to talking.

I feel like I'm on pretty solid ground, conversationally, when I mention his enormous, chunky ring, and he pulls it off, asking me to put out my hand.

I extend it as if he'll be putting it on me, but, "No, palm up," he says, and drops it: it weighs a ton.

Magic Beans

My ability to come home with an empty wallet and no real recollection of what I spent my money on has led to cash being called "magic beans" in our house - as in: "Did you trade the cow for magic beans today, Scott?"

So as part of my birthday gift, Katie created a set of twelve envelopes with small amounts of cash in them to be opened, one per month, over the course of the year. I am to spend these "magic beans" on one of my favorite things to purchase when I have money, that is, books.

Today's search for books on which to spend my magic beans came up empty, but I did manage to find a box full that somebody was just throwing away (if you can imagine someone actually just discarding books!) out of which I picked a few to bring home.

Lost Pen

I get this thought, not a great one, but I try and write down any of them that come by, like a fisherman waiting for a tug on the line, knowing most of the fish are undersized, on the off chance that the next one pays off.

It sort of drips into my mind a little at a time, the thought does, based on this "girl" (really a woman) I see walking by, something like, "Men call women 'girls' because in their heads, no matter how old they get, they never stopped being 'boys.'"

But when I reach for my pen, there's none to be found: not where I usually keep it, nor fallen into my bag, or anywhere. Frustration chokes my throat, like I can't speak, and my teeth clench around the silent words, phrases backing up into my stomach to make me sick with things unsaid.

Cooking Together

She mashes up the garlic, like the recipe says, and scrapes it into the pan where it begins to sizzle in the oil and release this lovely savor into the air.

But there's a whole bunch of garlic on the cutting board, and she's really taking her time about smashing it up, like she's not even smashing it, she's just being really thorough about scraping off the already mashed garlic into the pan, but I don't want the garlic to burn while she finishes smashing the rest (when will she smash the rest?) so I turn off the heat and give her a look, which she returns.

"Well," I finally say, because I don't want to make her feel stupid (though she is clearly being weird, and why hasn't she smashed the rest of the garlic?), "we should probably put the garlic in all at the same time...," hoping she'll get the hint.

Her eyes flash as she wordlessly points to the part in the recipe where I find that, oh! only one clove of garlic gets smashed, and the rest are reserved for the sauce, and maybe I should read the damn directions all the way through first before I say something foolish.

Matthew 25:40

The tunnel between the two subways lines is hospital tile white, fluorescent lights giving everything a hard edge. About midway down, a beggar sits with his back against the wall, his bare, cracked feet on cold stone floor, pants rolled up past his ankles, dark brown skin gone gray with dirt.

I hurry past, headphones deep in my ears.

And just as I pass he lifts his hat beseechingly, his mouth moving with words I will never hear, the music in my head swells, and Michael Bublé sings "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

"Lights, Please?"

Curves filled with white representing snow, capped by a rectangle of red hatched with black lines, representing a brick wall, lay beneath a swath of blue, representing a midwestern sky from almost 50 years ago. Behind the rectangle stand two squat, misshapen humanoids who speak strangely adult truths with the voices of children, underscored by a lilting, melancholy piano. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is on TV, and I feel all of the noise in my head go quiet as I stare at the wide screen, high-definition version of the same show I've been watching since I was a child.

I am staring through a window into a world that seems impossibly distant and remote, and yet, by watching it, this world, which I live in, becomes the strange place, and that one, with its herky movements and continuity errors and unblinking, absolutely unreconstructed embrace of Christian mythology, becomes the real world, seeping into this side of the screen like a benign virus, reminding me of how I really want to feel at Christmas.

Melancholia

The sun has gone down to dark, and the rain falls only as a wet in the air and flying spangles in the passing headlights. It's been a hard day, I'm tired and a little numb, but I don't feel bad, not the way I would have a few years ago when I was sunk deep in depression.

A brown pit-bull mix, tongue lolling from his enormous, grinning, toothy mouth, drags his owner up the street, and a smile crosses my face.

But the smile only goes part-way in, a needle of happiness penetrating a thick carapace of unfeeling, and I wonder at what cost my moods have evened out.