Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

"Many Christian theologians have moved resolutely away from an exclusive Christology. Today Christology has become (or rebecome) inclusive….” ~Paul F. Knitter

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – where people become divisive about religion.  The angst of “Happy Holidays,” the “share this status if you believe…”

So many contradictions

When in the continuum of Christ theocracy did it become acceptable to exclude people? As one who lives on the fringe of acceptable society, I find exclusion troubling. 

I celebrate Christmas and I say “Merry Christmas” with great joy.  However, I know many who don’t celebrate Christmas.  I see nothing wrong with saying “Happy Holidays.”  Christmas, Chanukah, and New Year’s Day are within a week of each other this year.  This is a Holiday period that INCLUDES Christmas, so why EXCLUDE – Isn’t that the Christian thing to do (you know, that “love thy neighbor” thing… taken from the Torah)?  I do not do it to be politically correct; I do it to share with ALL in the joy of the season.  If you find “Happy Holidays” or anything other than a specific reference to Christ offensive, then remove your “Christmas” tree (ancient pre-Christ Middle Eastern practice condemned in the Bible,(Jeremiah 10: 2-4) and rethink Black Friday and all of the great bargains you are getting in the name of Christmas. 

As I write, I sit here listening to Christmas Carols.  Nice pagan practice in celebration of the Winter Solstice that was taken over by the ancient Roman and Greek Orthodox churches.  I don’t feel particularly blasphemous doing this.

Christmas as we know it today is a combination of many practices and rituals from many cultures and religions.  Does this in any way diminish it?  No.  I find that it makes it richer.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

What I Should Have Said

It is one of those classic situations.  A comment is made, you are caught off guard and mutter something vapid, then later think of a thousand great responses.

I was on a sidewalk when a woman walking her two little rats on a split leash strolled right into my path.  I could either stop or get out of the way.  Since it was a busy sidewalk, I had to do an ungraceful twist to avoid squashing one of the little bugs.  She stops, looks at me with an expression like she just smelled something bad and says, “Smile, it’s really not that tragic.” 

Oh, the possibilities…

I fought my immediate urge to blurt out something rude. I am still not sure why.  I felt the bitchy bile boil up and I swallowed it in all its bitterness.  Instead, I said “You’re right, it is not tragic.”  Unfortunately, that only emboldened her further.  “I don’t know what your problem is…”  WTF?!?

Again, the possibilities…

I just wanted to get past it (and her) so I said “I was not looking at you.”  I might as well have said, “Yeah… well you too!” or some other lame, dumbass thing.  For some reason my filter was fully engaged and all the myriad possibilities just vanished in the evening breeze.

It took only seconds for the “You know what I should have said?” to kick in. 

First, the facts… she had a scowl the whole time she was telling me to smile.  Maybe she was smiling in her mind, but the amount of cosmetic surgery over the years allowed only the rictus grin I saw.  Her little rat dogs were way too far ahead on the leash than one would expect in polite society.  Oh, that’s right, I live in Florida… ain’t nothin’ polite about it.  Her age inappropriate clothing only added to the picture that screamed “IT’S ALL ABOUT ME!!!”… and I reacted to none of it.  I suppose I should be proud of myself for not stooping to her level, but it would have felt soooooo good to throw it all back at her.

OK, I need to get it out of my system.  WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID:

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?  Now that’s tragic!”  

“I am smiling.  I just stepped on one of your dogs.”

“Oh, that’s just me not giving a crap about what you think”

“Wow… have you saved those clothes since the 70’s?”

“I’ll smile when you can.  Maybe your surgeon can sew one for you.”

You get the idea.  Call it a missed opportunity, momentary lapse of reason, or just being someplace else mentally.  I promise I will not let this happen again… I have a reputation to uphold.

All that Jazz…

…and every other style of music. 

My world has taken a serious turn toward seriously handling my music seriously.  I’m serious.

I will not rehash what I just wrote in my other blog eSyrup, which you can access from my profile page, hint, hint…  But let it suffice to say that I am focused.  Between managing my Facebook music page, SoundCloud page, and my other blog, I am flooding myself toward a singular purpose – getting back in the studio and making new music.

By taking on all of this, I am giving myself a boot in the appropriate place.  From a young age, I spent a lot of time with my music and it exploded in the ‘80’s.  First, performing in a couple of bands, and then creating a home studio where I composed and recorded feverishly.  Then, in 1998, it stopped.

What happened in 1998?  I quit my job of 20 years and bought a Bed and Breakfast.  Aside from the fact that it was a 24/7 business, it was not exactly conducive to playing and recording.  Knowing I did not have a place for my piano, drums, PA system, keyboard stands, and lots of miscellaneous goodies, I either sold them or put them in storage.  The electronics left in storage for five years did not survive and I just couldn’t get it together enough to build it all from the pieces I had left – let alone the cost of replacing what was gone.

But I did…slowly.  Now I am at the point where I can pick up where I left off.  Still, finding the motivation has not been forthcoming.  That’s where the boot in the butt comes in.  I have now put myself out there in the virtual world.  I have only a limited amount of properly recorded material that is suitable for public consumption.  Soon, I will need something new… and that spells motivation.

My life has been less than balanced these days.  I have known all along that music is the answer.  It is my passion and something I will always have the desire to do.  It is also something I can do that is a unique artistic expression – and that is important to me.

So enough of all that jazz… let’s play!

Precious Little…

…Time. 

Everybody wants money.  If you don’t think so, ask yourself if you would go to work if you didn’t get paid.  Me either.  Can you make too much money?  I don’t think it is something I will have to deal with so that’s a moot point.  Can you be satisfied with your pay?  Probably, but for me it comes down to the simple fact of paying the bills in an area with a cost of living that is far too high and a mortgage so far underwater that I need scuba gear (my only poor timing in real estate so far… and a bad one).

But money isn’t everything.  I left a damn good job at with a very good company at the peak of my career during the 90’s to follow a dream.  It was absolutely 110% worth it and I would not trade the experience for anything – no regrets.  Unfortunately, life’s little twists and turns resulted in a sharp left turn in the Master Plan of life to the road of Simply Making It.  It is better than that dirt road of Not Making it… but I digress.

What is it that I really wanted during my early, lucrative career, my rewarding self employment, and my current “they call it a non-profit for a reason” work history?  Time.

I see my work calendar as the space between time off.  I am fortunate in that I work in a place with a generous time off policy, so there is ample opportunity to take vacations or an extended weekend like I am taking right now.  The problem is how I spend that time.  It seems that I have mastered the art of doing nothing.  I could say that health issues force me to take it slower than I used to, but that is not the heart of the matter (no pun intended).  We live in a country where we are encouraged to (tragically, literally) work ourselves to death.  While I am not a death’s door, I am not exactly a kid anymore.  Every week, this takes its toll and I spend so much time just decompressing that I usually accomplish very little every weekend. 

Here I am at day 2 of a four day weekend.  Yesterday I played with my tech toys, read, listened to music, read, sent emails, sent texts, listened to music, played with tech toys… etc.  None of this is bad, but I have so much that needs to be done and right now, I have the time to do it.  There is that damned Puritanical Work Ethic again (Damn those bloody Puritans!).  It even seeps into our personal lives – not that I am doing anything about it other than feeling guilty.

Precious time.  Part of me feels that I should treat it like the precious commodity that it is.  Part of me thinks that maybe, I am.

Late

I hated you.  Hate is a strong and ugly word; one that I claim is not in my vocabulary, but there it is.  I didn’t want the hate.  I didn’t want the burden, I didn’t want anyone to have enough power over me to bring me to that point, but you did.

I loved you.  I thought I had found something honest and true and powerful and it would carry me through the rest of my life.  I was insanely in love and insanely naïve.  I believed every word you said and I had to guard it carefully because no one could know.  It rose to a fever pitch and just as abruptly, it ended.  Actually, that is wrong.  If it ended, I would have been spared years of pain, therapy, and having to tear my life apart so I could rebuild it.  In a single moment, you told me the words that made me realize I gambled on love and lost two people.  One of those people suffered a great deal and I will never be able to let that go, nor will I be able to tell them the truth.

I learned about alcoholic behavior from you.  Pull me close, push me away, pull me close, push me away… over and over.  I believed the midnight tales of possibility that vaporized in the morning light.  When I discovered the truth, that I was nothing more than a diversion but also a potential liability, I was furious.  On our last meeting your behavior was so appalling that I became physically ill.

I found some of the best and dearest friends through you.  They should have been lifetime friends, but through manipulation and lies, they are now lost to me as well.  Your undeniable charisma drew people close and your brilliance was blinding.  It is no surprise that so many were blind to the truth.  On that last meeting, I saw through clear eyes for the first time.  I looked around and saw the actor on the stage and all of the audience rapt with tears in their eyes.  Well played – as was I.

I read your obituary today.  A little late, it was from six months ago.  In all of that time, no one told me.  So it seems that I, your dirty little secret, is safe and is literally taken to the grave.  I protected you to the end.

I am angry, I grieve, I am disappointed in myself for carrying this unnecessary burden these last ten years.  It is such a confusion of emotions that I am not sure what it all means.  In the end, I suppose it turns out that it means nothing.   I have nothing left but emptiness where there was once something so strong.

No one really knows who lives here but you and God and me.  None of us are about to tell.

Goodbye.



We have seen Big Brother…

…and he is us.


I don’t consider myself to be paranoid, but I do believe in a measure of caution (usually). In the virtual world, the same rules should apply to the physical world – some do and some don’t. The way you behave in public should be the same way you behave on the internet. Unfortunately, I can be equally inappropriate in both places. Most of this is in an attempt at humor and often it goes wrong. Do not believe for a minute that hitting the delete button erases your indiscretions.


Facebook, YouTube, Flicker (or any other photo sites), Twitter, Foursquare, etc, etc, etc… we are putting ourselves out there. While in a perfect world these are fun, benign distractions, things can go terribly wrong.

I know two people who have lost their jobs from Facebook postings. I know (at least) one person who, if a certain YouTube video is discovered, would be in serious trouble – at very least, seriously embarrassed. While the narcissistic world of Twitter is generally too filled with meaningless trash to even notice, law enforcement is paying attention and making arrests of idiots who tweet their deeds and locations. Perhaps most disturbing is Foursquare. Aside from the obvious (?) fact that we really don’t care where you are every moment of the day, here is something to ponder. Physicians (or their minions) are tracking patient activity on Foursquare to see behavior patterns, i.e. the nightly barhopping you like to tell us all about.

All of this is avoidable… or is it? I just saw a posting where someone sent what they thought to be a discreetly handled letter about a very personal (and very embarrassing) matter and it wound up on the internet. Still avoidable? Probably… if you want to go off the social grid or if you are a boyscout choirboy priest… can’t find a good analogy, but you get my point, you can avoid it.

Will I change my behavior? I already have. Will I keep all of this in mind when I am roaming the virtual pathways? You bet. Will I ever sign up for Foursquare? I doubt it.

So the next time you complain on Facebook or any other social media about your job, family, friends… you have just given more power to Big Brother. Who, by the way, is you.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

There be beasties here – ghosts and apparitions that are only seen out of the corner of the eye.  Then there are the ones who hit you with a 2 X 4 between the eyes.

After making every possible excuse to avoid it, it took five years to make a return trip to New Jersey.  Mind you, on my last trip I was here less than two days and my reason was to set up a storage unit on my move from Maine to Florida.  Don’t ask why I stored things in New Jersey, I may have to start self flagellating again and we don’t want that.  On that trip, I saw only one of my sisters, my mother (for the last time) and an Esperanto speaking moving van guy who would say “gooly goo” or something like that to which I would smile and nod – little did I know that meant help yourself to my stuff and overcharge me, please.

If it were only to empty the storage unit, I probably would not have made the trip.  So far, and the $$$ are still adding up, it will take about five years of not paying storage fees to make up for the cost of this trip.  Flying into Newark (on purpose), renting a car and driving to the middle of nowhere is far more expensive than you might think. 

And then there are the ghosts.

Many occupied the storage unit itself.  In there were cast aside remnants of my business, my marriage, the marriage of my business, the business of my marriage, Christmas decorations (yay!), my grandmother’s antique china, original artwork, journals, photos… no climate control and all were incredibly in perfect condition.  I think I bested Dorian Gray on that score. 

Between cleanup, trips to the UPS store, and meeting the unit’s grim reaper – the trash hauler – I had some time to explore the area.  The most remarkable thing is how little has changed in the 13 years since I moved from here.  Some businesses have closed, others opened, a new house here and there, abandoned (foreclosed) houses… but for that amount of time the change is insignificant.  I almost wish some of it was wiped off the earth but even that could not keep the ghosts at bay.

I saw my old house, the places I used to go, where I used to work… all carried bittersweet memories.  I have both demonized and romanticized this place.  Actually being here has been a good reality check and an opportunity to put some things to rest.  Nothing is ever completely resolved and may continue to haunt, but haunt away… I will not be here.

Then there is what finally tipped the scales in favor of making this trip - an opportunity to spend time with my very dear friend Scott.  Our escapades over the past 30 years, not to be outdone by yesterday’s whirlwind tour of the seamy underbelly of the Dover bar scene is a story, make that several stories, in itself.  Let it suffice to say that as usual, we had a great time and actually got out alive and unharmed.  If you know the area, you appreciate what that means.

As my thoughts turn to leaving this place for possibly the last time, something occurs to me.  Maybe, just maybe, now I will be a ghost who haunts this place.

Boo.