A Narrow Line

As I was shopping on Wednesday, a man I’ve never met came up to me and mumbled something about a holiday gift for me while thrusting an envelope into my hands. He promptly vanished, leaving me more than a little perplexed.

When I got home and opened it, there was nothing but a $20 bill inside. The envelope read:

Be Kind to Each other,
Be Friends with Each Other,
Show Care to Each Other,
And Give Love Away

We’re hanging in the hammock between Christmas and New Year’s, wedged between celebrations. What is this week about, as we recover from one and gear up for the other? Is there a pendulum here between family and friends, tradition and possibility? Are we lurching from one to the other in a span of a week in hopes we can gather momentum for the coming year, or are these two holidays two parts of a greater whole?

To Muge Daido Daiosho

The mountains, weathered, are your bones
The sparkling river my tears.
Your bones are my bones
My tears your tears
But who is crying?
You hold the dragon’s pearl
Brilliant with the three treasures
In an empty hand.

Jeffrey Radcliffe

December 20th, 2009

The apartment is festooned with lights and decorations. The tree is trimmed. Cider has been mulled. The ghosts of Christmases past have settled in for a fortnight.

I’m a breath away from finishing my first term of massage therapy school. It’s been challenging in many ways, but the biggest challenge was facing it with seems like a litany of health problems. All minor, in the big picture, but it doesn’t take much to push us humans off our game.

It’s not a surprise that the mood I’ve been in most often recently is weary. If I were in a buddy cop movie, I’d be the guy saying “I’m getting too old for this @!$#.” The reality, of course, is that I’m at the age where I can finally handle this @!$#. My question: how can I do it with grace?

For the rest of the year, I’m maintaining. I’m cleaning, fixing, organizing, and clearing the decks in any way I can think of. Maintaining my space, my body and my mind. For if I concentrate a little, I can hear the impending onslaught of January, and it makes me… weary.

As it does, the end of the year moves quickly thanks to the activity of the holiday season. Add the end of my term in school and the current is swift indeed.

I’ve taken days of lower activity to prepare myself for the end of the year, and it was a good decision. The traces of illness are finally gone from my body and I feel the energy of health, though memories of what can be done with it are faint.