December 29: Most Vital Hope, New Year's Weekend, Mouse and Magic

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts, she gathers her most vital hope . . .

Vital hope.  That's what I have right now.  Welcome to New Year's weekend.  Saturday morning, to be exact.  The snow has stopped.  My sewer line is not coughing up into my bathtub and sinks.  When I flushed the toilet this morning, everything disappeared the way it was supposed to.  Yes, life is back to normal.  No more shit.

I know making that statement is a little dangerous.  It invites disaster.  Sort of like saying "Wow, my car is all paid off!" invites transmission problems, brake jobs, and head-on collisions.  However, in these last few days of 2018, I am going to try to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive.  (Thanks, Johnny Mercer, for that line.)

For those of my disciples scratching their heads, don't worry.  I haven't partaken in special brownies or gummies, and I haven't sipped any weird Kool-Aid.  I simply am trying to end my year on a high note.  Come the first days of January, I will most likely be back to my old, dark self.  However, I am heading to Florida for ten days on January 2.  Walt Disney World.  Harry Potter World.  Sun.  Warmth.  No blocked sewers or frozen water pipes.  Just mouse ears and magic wands.

My son is going crazy to climb on that airplane.  Yesterday, my sister took him to the salon, and my son chose to have his hair dyed red.  He was going to go with pink but changed his mind at the last minute.  Red is his most current shade.  He's also been green and purple.  When he hits a swimming pool, who knows what color his hair will fade to?  He may be pink.

That is my wisdom for this day.  Being positive.  Ending the year on a high note.  Mickey Mouse.  Hogwarts.  Magic for all.

Saint Marty is thankful this day for his complicated, crazy life.

December 30: Frankie, Ravi Shankar, "Snowfall"

I am sitting in McDonald's at the moment, looking out of the long wall of windows, waiting for the snow to start.  I think they're calling this storm Frankie, which, to me, sounds like a character in a 1930s James Cagney gangster film:  "Wait 'til Frankie shows up, see.  Frankie will set you straight, you dirty rat."

I am not excited about dealing with a huge snow.  It just complicates my day and my plans.  However, I have chosen to live in an area of the country where snow and cold basically controls your life for about seven months of the year, if you're lucky.  Eight months, if you're unlucky.

So, I am thankful that, at the moment, the sky is blue, and the wind is nonexistent.

Saint Marty is on vacation and ready to relax a little bit this New Year's weekend.

Snowfall

by:  Ravi Shankar

Particulate as ash, new year's first snow falls

upon peaked roofs, car hoods, undulant hills,

in imitation of motion that moves the way

static cascades down screens when the cable

zaps out, persistent & granular with a flicker

of legibility that dissipates before it can be

interpolated into any succession of imagery.

One hour stretches sixty minutes into a field

of white flurry: hexagonal lattices of water

molecules that accumulate in drifts too soon

strewn with sand, hewn into browning

mounds by plow blade, left to turn to slush.