From Here to Epiphany

Eureka moment of the day: Christmas is in DECEMBER! OK, OK, my epiphanies are lame. Next I'll be discovering shoes, or cheese on toast. Still, there's a distinction between knowing something and realizing it. Knowing is sitting on the couch drinking eggnog. Realizing is having the eggnog shot directly into your bloodstream via the huge needle in your ass.

I don't celebrate Christmas, except in a formulaic kind of way, but it's impossible not to notice its approach. The thing is a sasquatch. This year the shambling progress of tinsel and schmaltz has coincided with the onset of a particularly nasty winter. There's been ice, snow, water, and every gradation of precipitation between. I've lost track of when I last saw the sun. The house is old, under-insulated; my hands are a frozen bundle of bones.

To come clean, I've been kind of low-grade miserable for a while now, and the winter has only made it worse. I miss walking and vitamin D and socklessness. Like trees losing the camouflage of their leaves, some truths strip bare: I do not like my job. I do not like where I live. I am wasting [time, self, words]. I regret: acutely, chronically, painfully.

Of course, there's nothing for it but to slap some tinsel on a tree and keep going. Earlier Christians knew this, smart little suckers that they were, and plunked down in the middle of the darkest season a great big shiny bright star.

Merry Christmas, folks. Maybe I'll see you on the road.