Hippos

Wow.. Christmas. This week I was stunned to be greeted at an elevator with a "Merry Christmas!" Many things struck me about that split second...

• There is something categorically wrong about being "stunned" with a Christmas greeting. Must analyze.
• There was no snow on the ground & the air outside was juuuust balmy enough I'd left my coat in the car. It felt more like late October.. or perhaps late February... than just before Christmas.
• Noone around was wearing garishly snowflaked sweatshirts or santa hats, or holiday gear of any kind.
• The walls & floors of the building were institutional plain, no decorations in sight.
• Everyone I saw looked as rushed as I felt. The ONLY person who looked at all relaxed was the one who said Merry Christmas. Coincidence?
• The person who said it to me looked at me almost as though it were a dare, & they expected to be scowled at.. as though they'd done that many times in the last couple of days & while still defiant, had learned to stay wary of the public beasts.
• The person who said it to me deserved a return of Christmas cheer.

On quick review, I realized my insides felt much like the walls & floors of the building. I put out my psychic mirror, & knew there was no sparkle in my eyes (which is a shame, because they're so pretty when they sparkle!) They were for the moment so introverted that only a dull grey monotone was looking out at the world, and I was so busy looking inward I wasn't even seeing it anyway. Poor world! What had it done to deserve such treatment? I may joke about it from time to time, but I don't ACTUALLY kick the cat when I come home frustrated... why should I take out my own personal demons on unsuspecting strangers?

Sometimes I get so tunnel-visioned into an emotion or three that I lose sight of all the wonderful things around me. And holy cow, there are some wonderful things around me. People who are so jam-packed full of fantastical qualities I can't even put them all into words. Supreme beings of all shapes & sizes both inside & out. I have been increasingly tunnel-visioned this season, and to my friends I apologize for wallowing all over their holiday(s). I will try to shake out of it a bit in the season that's left and return to them all the good things they give me just by being in my life. (Although I still reserve the right to crawl off like a dog to lick my wounds in some secluded wood when necessary.) God love them for sticking around!

Tonight I took three hoydens with me to do some Christmas shopping and completely failed to annhilate them in the process. I did, however, interspersed amongst the running directional commentary (Get OVER here! Stop touching things, please? Keep your hands to yourSELVES! Don't push each other into people.. have you lost your minds? Do NOT lay down on the escalator! Walk, please. Walk, please! WALK!!! STOP TOUCHING THINGS!!) manage to remember to toss out a few "Merry Christmas"s of my own. Experimentally-like. I know my sparkle was only at half mast, but they didn't necessarily know that. You know what? Most of them looked as stunned as I felt at the elevator. That's just not right. My half-sparkle shoulda been lost in the blinding love of the season, not standing out as an anomaly. So now I'm going to HAVE to keep it up. Ripples in a pond & all that.

Blogger won't let me cut & paste, so although I know this reads a bit choppy, I'm hitting "go" & going to go work on wrapping up a little Christmas cheer. Maybe I'll stand on a chair for awhile & look around the house before bed. Maybe I'll lay down backwards over the sofa & look around the living room. Or backwards off my bed & look around there. Sometimes a change of physical perspective will - oddly enough - alter an internal one as well. I've settled myself into all sorts of nonconventional ways of thinking when hanging upside down off the edge of my bed... maybe a little "(upside)down" time will settle me into some new perspective again now!

It does do odd things when combined with mistletoe, though. I'm just sayin'.