Christmas In Heaven
December 31, 2004
That song, "Christmas in Heaven", is playing on my TV as "the Meaning of Life" draws to its finale. There's a strange greenish gray vacuum in the air as our household comes to grip with inconceivable tragedy in Southeast Asia. Monty Python films are one place to go. Better than the bible. Its hard for anyone right now . . .but I'm am so terribly aware that its easier to be me than it is to be most other people. Thanksgiving is the holiday that makes the most sense. Christmas has long ago divorced itself from any importance other than state sanctioned family time. Global scale disaster in its wake really underscores this feeling. I hope we sort this out on a human level. Right now. No light from the sky is going to wash our pain away.
At least this tremendous loss was not precipitated by murderous fools dead set on the idea that God was backing them up in their quest to make everyone behave the way they think all people should behave. This is a variation on the news of the day. The earth is to blame. The most concrete entity. The media can only conjure arguments about who is helping most and who is helping in the right way. Body counts and extreme weather footage surpass ratings into an area where there is finally just too much to take in. Too many waves. Too many floating cars. Too many children with thousand-yard stares.
Sure…the abstract notion of prayer can be applied to make people feel they have contributed in a positive way. Helplessness breeds bizarre behaviour. If the earth is to blame do you pray for the earth to become something else? Do you ride the exercise bike and eat right or do you pray that an anti-aging cream is invented soon? Somewhere the Rapturists are tsk tsking and printing up new pamphlets full of "I told you so's". Fuck them. Fuck the second coming. If Jesus is coming back to kill us all and take us with him to a better place he certainly keeps botching the job. Stop with the reminders and “signposts” already. This bearded bastard is micromanaging the shit out of us and I happen to like it right here. I think this is a good cruel world and I refuse to believe there has to be a reason for everything bad. Doesn’t the idea of infinity provide more hope rather than less? We’ll find a way. “Its Christmas in Heaven every day”.