Saturday, December 24, 2005

Christmas Eve, 2005

There are a couple of places I could be tonight, but I am home alone. This is the time of year when I should always be alone. There's no fooling around on Christmas or Christmas Eve. No pretending I fit in. No fooling God, who always seemed during my religious days to find me rather more contemptible than he found the average Christian, and who knew better than anyone that I didn't belong anywhere.

As a holiday, Christmas doesn't mean much to me now. It was on life support already, given that Jesus wasn't born in December and the holiday was already totally consumerist-driven. Then the 'plot to ban Christmas' knuckleheads surfaced and finished off what was left.

But it's a good time to reflect on how fragile my connection to the world is. I often feel like a wraith, clinging to the substance of reality. If I relax my grip, I'll disappear, and people will look around and then at each other, and say, "Did something just happen?" And they will have already forgotten I was ever here.

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