Christmas Eve...I spent the evening outside burning a big fire and listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, - now that's Christmas music! I heard my neighbors pausing on their late nite dog-peeing and snow-shoveling duties to briefly cock an ear to the blues-and-metalized arrangements of Christmas standards and tasty originals.
Two years ago Christmas, I built that doll house from plywood and pine in the Longfellow garage - check out the two stairways and attic door details. It was super-fucking cold those last December weeks - like arctic. I remember being dressed up like a spaceman, spray-painting it up on sawhorses, under blazing shop lights, just nights before the big morning, most of the paint atomizing into the air, little making it on to the wood. I was burning a blazing fire in the driveway and cranking Dead Can Dance, the neighborhood was otherwise silent and still.
I remember pausing, removing my filter mask, and turning to the open air and blazing fire to - to my surprise, acknowledge the unspoken greeting of an under-dressed woman with semi-hollow eyes silently heading down the alley to our then drug-dealer neighbors. Seeing what I was doing, she burst into a huge smile that defied the frigid air and her sad mission, and lasted all the way past my garage edge.
The contrasts make me want to cry to think about it now.
0 comments:
Post a Comment