Looking down the barrel of the holiday

Everyone is under amazing pressure these days. Everyone. Even the chronic losers cannot take refuge in their escapist ways these days. The winners see the brass ring shaved down to a sliver, and hundreds more hands reaching, while the redemption value of brass is dwindling to nothing. The losers find their ruts of self-pity being foreclosed by the smiling images of drug addled patients loosed upon the land. No more depression, they tell us, no more anxiety. If you feel anything, feel great, feel American, feel first and think later.

I have a few presents squirrled away. I try to enjoy the view from the new house. I try to avoid thinking about the job that is being done on my 15 year old son in public school, and the jobs that are being lost in my workplace. I try to avoid thinking about the fantasy of cheer that is held out to us through a thousand glimpses into other people's dreams. Where are any of these dreams realized?

Whose dreams come true anymore? And why do we take it for granted that dreams coming true are better than realities lived on their own terms?

The holidays divorce the images of happiness from the routine of daily living. They create a kind of joy ghetto where you need a special pass to visit, and you can't take anything you find there back home with you.

Less pressure. It is as though we are all on a submarine that is sinking deeper and deeper into the inky cold water...as though it is just a matter of time before the hull caves in.

I have gone to many schools of pressure adaptation. The school that tells you to hold your breath, the school that tells you to thrash and grab, the school that tells you to stare straight ahead and wait until the pain abates of its own, the school that teaches the arts of displacement; how to push your pressure off into the skins of those weaker and more gullible than you.

What I have, finally, is just love. And the knowledge that love is not enough. It can't really slay dragons, or drain the floods or calm the angry storm skies. If anything, love keeps you more vulnerable. Everyone you love is a hostage held by the future. You must pay a ransom. And that ransom is your dreams.

In order to really love in this world, you cannot live in or for dreams. You must live in the dustballs and freshness-expired ordinariness of this world. Love or dreams, what a choice.

I have chosen though. I left small, unmarked dreams in a paper bag at the bus station. My love came out of the back of the waiting room, disheveled and blurry, but real. I would do it again.

That isn't what sells sugar water or huge vehicles. But it gets me through to tomorrow, and soon the holidays will be over, and we can wear our ordinariness without apology again.