Mara under the Mistletoe.....

Happy New Year to all ya'll blog oglers lurking around the bin of cyberspace!!! I can't even begin to fathom all the possibilities this New Year will avail and wish all who read this joy and happiness and of course, and endless stream of creative karma flooded with fields of laughter and smiles and friendships and lovers and all the things that add meaning to this skip-n-sojourn around the sun.

Highlights from the past holiday include being Net free for two weeks (it's amazing how peaceful life was prior to our warbled dot.com obsession), presnting "angels" to Mama Bear on Christmas day --she liked the golden cross I purchased for her better, but that's just her--travelling all around the state, spending New Years eve with a mixture of Iranian dissidents, anarchists, heavy drinkers, Med students, and my best friends Nick the writer, song writer Dave McDonald, published scholar DUST and of course, a friendly close-lippped "button" kiss from my beautiful friend Jennifer on the final gong indicating Midnight (was she Jennifer or was she Cinderella?) .....perfect.

I went Ice fishing with my Uncle and Brother-in-law the day after Christmas. The pond was frosted over with about eight inches of ice. In mid-winter, the brittle Illinois horizon is streaked with a hard nickel back gray refulgence. The tufted clouds seem splattered against the atmosphere in an overhead puddle of silver bulbs. With the snow patches and barren landscape, the sky and the land seem to weld into a subliminal oneness with the earth, with the body, with the soul that yearns--the heart that seeks; the flesh that aches to acheive this sort of oneness.

My Uncle, my late-father's younger brother, is a flannel shirted man of the hills. We drove out deep into the country, swerving down slings of gravel roads and rackety hills. Way out, past Glasford, we found the frozen mecca--the pond, a chalked fount awaiting the orchestrated casts of our wrists; the dips of our baited lines.

We drilled holes, smoked cigars, drank pissing hot coffee from a thermos, froze in between shots of family philosphy and idle jokes.

"That's what Jesus told St. Peter when he tried walking on the water. 'Just try it in December!'"

While sloshing to work in the frigid rain this morning, I came to the realization that the reason I love writing so much is that a writer--the true artists-- understands that he is always a dilettante; always a virgin. There's no black belts, no PHD's, no corporate rungs, no anniversaries. No matter how much a writer has published or written, he always arrives to the pristine winteresque blankness of a page--the virgin whiteness of an oblong sheath--the bridal pinings awaiting inky scratches--the overall newness of language. Same with a painter and his blank canvas; or as my brother in law noted, a doctor with his white coat- an estimatation that no matter how much we learn or acheive about the human body; about the world of art, about the pulsating spirit, we will always be sophomores--always be yearning, acheiving and growing in our finite knowledge of our ever vibrating globe.

True the race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor wealth cosigned to men of understanding, but chance and time do happen to us all. On the advent of this New Year, my friends, let us never forget how little we know, how profound and curious the world is and what a joy it is to be immersed in this bubble of life one magical eternal moment at a time.