Shipwrecked & Comatose

I'm going to do what people have been doing for centuries this time of year. I'll be doing something that humans have done since they first began to notice the cyclical nature of of the universe and the patterns inherent in nature. I'm going to celebrate a day known in today's culture as the national holiday of Christmas. On the modern western calendar it's called Christmas, but humans have celebrated this day for centuries before that. We all know winter is rough. But even though we have hit the darkest days, we know light is returning. So let's get out the party trappings, eat lots of food, celebrate with family, and give each other gifts for no real reason. Just celebrate because we're alive and on this earth and everything on this earth tends to go according to patterns. Sometimes the universe is chaotic and unfair and nature is unpredictable, but there are some things that are reliable. As of today, the days grow longer. It always does every year....

I just finished my second semester of singing class this week. It has been an interesting journey in this class. The idea of Libera Canto shouldn’t even have to be a technique. It almost seems like something a singer unlearns in a lifetime of singing. I still had a hard time with it. My first session of the class had me thinking of who I am as a singer. I understood that my teacher wanted me to understand what it meant to just sing a song, and not perform it. There really is a difference. We were doing all kinds of strange techniques to make this happen. I still wasn’t sure if it was working. Was I really getting anything out of the class? My singing rarely received any individual attention. During the 6 weeks of the course, most of us only were able to sing our chosen songs solo once or twice. Was it helping me? After the October disaster with the Harrison Players, I knew I hadn’t learned nearly enough. I liked the teacher. I liked the other students. After meeting for a f...

This morning when I left my car and headed into the office, I left the bag containing my day's snack foods in it. I had an apple and some nuts. At lunch I realized I still had a teensy bit of Christmas shopping left to do (I know I said I was finished, but one of my gifts isn't going to make it, so I had to find something else for this person). I went out to the Borders two exits up the highway from my office to find something. When I exited the highway I saw a homeless man standing at the traffic light. I used to come through this area quite often and that man has been there many times before. I realized that I still had my bag of snacks with me. I thought it was some kind of cosmic coincidence. I had food in my car so I could give it to someone who needed it more than I did. The light was red, so it was the perfect opportunity to offer my food to this man. I rolled down the window. He looked at me expectantly. I shoved the bag out the window and asked, "Would y...

Hey look! I'm not doing the typical Christmas rant this year and am handling another topic entirely. When I was a young twentysomething, making my way in the working world, I found myself working part time in a real estate office one December. One afternoon the brokers began putting up the holiday decorations in the office. There were standard decorations with garlands and trees and pictures of Santa. The brokers wanted to be as ecumenical as possible and put up some decorations more evocative of Hanukkah as well. This also led to more discussion about how Christmas-y the Christmas decorations should be. Should they put up a crèche? They decided that both a crèche and a menorah were considered religious symbols. If you had one, you had to have the other and they weren’t sure how religious they should be. In the end, the decorations stayed with trees, santas, and pictures of dreidls (because a dreidl is a game and doesn’t have any real religious meaning behind it). Most of the broke...