Its 2:43 Christmas morning and Im awake. I fell asleep early and woke up in the middle of the night again, as Im prone to doing these days. My aunt, uncle, and all the dogs are asleep, so the house is quiet. It would be a lie to say Im not a little more alert, looking into the dark living room and down the dim hallway for signs of mystical activity on my way to and from the bathroom. I know I reference the Santa Claus Lie in my writing, as well as paint the whole St. Nick idea as an intangible, like ancient astronauts or a Christmas llama. But, truth is, I love the Santa scene. Some of my best memories from childhood involve the elusive old cherub, and I dont feel any worse for ruminating the possibility that his existence is a myth instilled in me as truth by my mother. Possibility. Last Christmas, while trying to shake some holiday anti-cheer in a downtown Paris, Tennessee coffee shop, I overheard a middle-aged lady tell the barista that she was the only person in Henry County who had actually seen Santa Claus, with his sleigh and reindeer, up in the sky. She recounted how one Christmas Eve, when she was a little girl, she was resisting her mothers demands that she go to bed when she suddenly heard a sound. She looked out the window. It wasnt a mirage, she said. You know how it is up there--dark with a cloud cover. I saw parts--brown, red, reindeer--about 150 feet up. I heard the bells. Ive also written about almond-eyed angels and Cao Đài portals. Ive obsessed about neon and asphalt as the fabrics of time and space. Ive watched an abandoned motel sign for symptoms of a time leak and tried to unlock the Vault of First Kisses with a chord progression. All of this is as real to me as the coffee shop ladys Santa Claus experience. All of this is my Santa Claus--a shape-shifting, mystical Nicholas Appleseed of soul-stirring moments and possibility, a 2 AM patron saint of overlapping dimensions and terrestrial points connecting through bent time, an engineer of electric hope and moonlight comet song. The walls of this house are humming a little and an outside dog is barking. Its probably nothing. These are the hours when ghosts and angels dance. Still, I should get back to bed, just in case.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 08:44:30 +0000
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