A purple Christmas

I sailed an ocean, unsettled ocean
Through restful waters and deep commotion
Often frightened, unenlightened
Sail on, sail on sailor
–“Sail On Sailor,” Wilson/Almer/Rieley/Kennedy

Well, 2004 was a rollercoaster, so why should I have expected my Christmas to be any different? The past few days have been difficult. It was my first Christmas sans mate in almost a decade, and a freak show of emotions came calling. I had forgot how troublesome Christmas can be. My poor dog Ilsa didn’t quite know what to make of it. I will have to make it up to her later this week, when the weather warms, with a few long treks through Central Park.

How to measure the loneliness? Think of a small box of Russell Stover chocolates, given to me on Christmas Eve by a friendly Arab teen who works long hours in the corner deli. I go there every morning to buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper. “Merry Christmas, boss,” he said as he handed me the wrapped package. This hard city does have its moments of tender mercy.

I’m not writing to hail on the holidays. We all go through these times, and most of us endure and survive them. As Woody Allen once said, “The heart is a resilient muscle.”

In that spirit, I’ll reproduce here a note I received in the mail today from my friend Tom, who I wrote about in the piece entitled “True west.” Apparently, life on the left coast suits him just fine. Sail on, buddy.

First Christ,mas in the Golden State

Well, the people here are as beautiful as the weather, so I don’t stand out as much as I do on the East Coast but I seem to be fitting in among them—I have registered for my first Botox injection to try to cure the Irish curse and have put a ten-dollar down payment on a Porsche Carrera—they read the paper while they drive here so it can be very distracting, especially when they read about the record snowfall in the East…they dream big, of course, since they’re so close to that nightmare called Hollywood…they will put me in the movies and all I have to do is “act naturally”…the mountains almost reach to the sea, so nature has seduced them all into some false sense of well-being. Oprah is a neighbor, so we feel optimistic in the face of all that wealth and know she is doing as well as she can to treat the servants as well as she does her producers…I am in love with a woman who rides horses and cooks stew and she is like light folding into the ocean. I imagine I will be all right even though as a New Yorker, I hate to be polite to anybody—it’s so demeaning to everyone concerned. I have come here to outwit the West and hopefully take some of their easily earned money—anyway, the only ones you can trust on this spread, as is true anywhere, is the hired help. So now the Christ,mas lights are blinkin’, the tide leaves a little snowy white foam in its wake, Santa is preparing his red t-shirt and trunks (a bathing suit to those of you who didn’t have an old man from Brooklyn) and waiting to sleigh ride in on the next warm Pacific blue wave. The second true thing I have to write is that I hope we can find it in our jingle bell hearts to have a little more faith and love for all those soldiers far away and near.

Merry Christ,mas,
Thom