December 18, 2006

"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more?"

Five days until Christmas and I’ve already caved. I’m buying presents. I’m going to Bloomingdale’s after work tomorrow to push through the crowds (and be pushed) and wait in line while Winter Wonderland (by far the worst of the holiday songs – what does conspiring by the fire mean anyway? Every time I hear that song I picture two people on a couch plotting world domination) plays over the sound system with the sincere hope that I will be spending my hard earned money on something someone will appreciate.

Can someone tell me what to get Dads? They’re probably the hardest people in the world to shop for because they have everything, and if they don’t have everything they don’t tell you that they don’t have everything and you have to, through some form of divine intervention, figure out that what they don’t have is a new container of Titleists and the DVD of Bridge on the River Kwai.

Moms are just as hard to read. You could draw their name on a piece of paper with a red crayon and they’d frame it and put it on the wall in their office and act like it’s the best thing they’ve ever gotten. “For me?!” Gasp! You never know if what you gave them is something really great or totally bogus, they just love that you thought of them. I mean, I guess.

With siblings it’s like some strange competition, because pretty much everything else in your lives from the moment you could speak was about one-upping the other one. So Christmas gifts are no different. Who is more creative, who spent the most money, who had their ears open all year to really get the one thing that the other one wanted. I mean never mind about the gift, the stress alone is enough to make you want to just spend your life savings on a Lexus with that really big bow so that you’ll never have to worry about not being the better gift-giver ever again.

Maybe the Grinch was right. And I’m not saying I have a heart two sizes too small, I’m just saying that the whole capitalistic idea that drives this holiday is pretty ridiculous and it, with it’s not-so-perfect gift giving tradition, is driving families apart all over the world.

Oh, and did I mention that I hate shopping? I can already feel the chest pains and claustrophobia setting in that only comes along with being in tight, high-pressured spaces with women wielding shopping bags. Maybe that’s “the Eskimo way,” though you’d never know it because that song, like the holidays, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

December 12, 2006

mean something - stat.

Do you ever just get the feeling that your life doesn’t mean anything? I mean of course it means something, you’re living it. It has to have some sort of something that’s keeping you getting up in the morning. But I guess what I’m really talking about is a purpose. Like how when you were little you thought you could do everything (me: doctor, pianist, president) and then you come to find out that it’s very hard to do even one thing moderately well let alone three things very well.


And while I know how to:
apply a Band Aid to a cut,
play Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, and
was voted in my high school yearbook as “Most Likely To Be President”-

I still don’t feel like I’ve accomplished half the things I set out to do back when I would put on my father’s white dress shirt that I wore like a lab coat and listened to the sound of people hearts through my yellow plastic stethoscope –
buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom.

Why can’t we change our minds now as easily as we did then? Because we’ve set a path, we’ve paid for (and are still paying for) a college degree that doesn’t allow us to cut people open or play with the Boston Symphony. We are paying to simply maintain our lives in cities and towns all over world. But what if?

What if, what if, what if –
you want more than that?

buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom
The sound of something meaning.

December 7, 2006

You can't gift a non-gift.

Every year it’s the same. The anxious feeling in my stomach that no amount of eggnog can correct – the impending knowledge that Christmas is fast approaching. Then of course comes the regret that last year I neglected to send out a memo letting everyone know that I’ll no longer be giving gifts for the holidays, that I have officially decided to start the trend of not giving gifts, that Christmas cards and wishing good cheer should be enough for all of the people in my life to still love me without my having to put down half of my already small pay check to buy their friendship, for at least until next December.

I try, I try really hard to get gifts that mean something to the person. None of this, “oh just a blue sweater for him,” or “a bottle of really nice shampoo for her.” Because my bet is that he already has a sweater, probably in all different shades of blue and doesn’t need (or want) another one. And I bet she washes her hair every day (or at least rinses) and doesn’t need a bottle of shampoo from some specialty store that costs $30 and smells like chocolate chip cookies or brown sugar. You want to wash hair, not eat it.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that gifts should have some sort of impact in a person’s life - or else you shouldn’t be giving a gift at all (frankincense and myrrh? Please).

Because what are gifts supposed to mean anyway? When you’re a kid what something means doesn’t mean anything at all, and it’s probably the greatest thing ever. All you know is that you want a bike with a banana seat (in sea-foam green, please) the latest (and most atomically offensive) Barbie, and the train-set you saw those kids on television using. Little did you know (nor did you care) just how long a thing like that can take to put together. You’re a kid, and that’s the glory of being a kid, you’re not the one who has to do anything.


I had a train set. I had wanted a train set, talked about a train set, subtly pointed out train sets, and then one year, I finally got one. My father took many laborious hours putting that thing together, making sure that the tracks held firm over the make-shift bridge, aligning all of the bending tracks with the straight ones, even setting the little pipe-cleaner looking fake trees in all of the appropriate places. I think I used that thing all day, until I finally realized around 6:00 that I’d spent the last six hours watching something go around in circles. I never used the train set again.

Now that I’m no longer a kid (sadly) the holiday just doesn’t mean what it used to. And by holiday, I mean gifts. I don’t know what to get anyone anymore. But I’ve had a good run. I’ve been giving all of the right things to all of the right people since I no longer believed in flying reindeer, cared about train sets and started getting a paycheck. And like any good thing, my reign as ultimate gift giver has come to an end.

So what does this mean? Well it means I may or may not be without friends in 2007. But that’s fine. The ones who really care will respect my decision and will thank me for not wasting my money on sweaters they don’t need and shampoo they can’t bake. Either that, or between now and December 24th I might get hit with a stroke of divine gift intervention, however I’d say that’s about as likely as my chance at getting another train set.

December 4, 2006

The real thing scares me.

Its hard work being out there. And everyone is. Everyone is doing the same thing and they don’t know why or they don’t care about how ridiculous the whole thing really is. So the only thing to do is buy a scotch old fashioned, sip is slowly, and watch as everyone around you forces moments with each other and prolongs the whole charade.

They ask me things like:
Can I buy you a drink?
How do you like New York?
What do you do?

I want to answer with things like:
As many as you can afford.
We both know you don’t really care if I do.
Astrophysicist.

Because I’m not stupid or maybe I am so much so that I’ll never know the difference, but after almost a year in New York I have a pretty good idea of how things work. Because when you say things like “Vivian, Veronica, wait, Rachel? Want to come back to my place?” you have to know that you’re not fooling anyone.

Because I’m no fool or maybe I am so much so that things will never change. Men can always talk about things while I’m drinking scotch the way I’d talk about my knowledge of celestial bodies and the interstellar medium – halfheartedly.

December 1, 2006

What is it about the weather?

This can’t be right. I have my window open and it’s December. I have my window open and I can count down 25 days until Christmas. What it is about the weather that has us always talking about it and thinking about it and wondering how much to put on the morning and how much to take off at night.

Maybe because (like turkey at Thanksgiving) we can use weather as something to remind ourselves, that despite everything else that doesn’t feel like it makes sense, from work to relationships (or lack thereof), to family and friends (even when they’re far away), we know, no, we count on the fact that the weather will always be warm in summer and cold in winter.

The tree lighting at Rockefeller caused gridlock in Manhattan last night. I walked through the crowds to get home and got stuck in them, metal barriers stopping me, holding me back, telling me I wasn’t allowed to go any further. So I stopped on the steps of St. Patrick’s and stood among the crowd and watched their eyes all looking skyward in silence, listening as the people across the street tucked behind the buildings along with the tree none of us could see, counted down. And then the cheers came and I couldn’t see standing right there on 5th avenue what the rest of America could see right in their very own living rooms. Sometimes the way New York looks on television is an easier place than it really is.

That tree lighting every year at the end of November is something we count on. We count on that tree the way we count on people and God and love and getting paid, getting laid, getting drunk, getting out of where we are now to one day get somewhere else. We count on time and our lives and the delusional idea that nothing will ever change.

I have my window open and it’s December and it just feels like one more thing that doesn’t make sense.