Another year of being dutiful, industrious and adorably harmless

The second decade of the 21st century will soon be just a reference point. This one, however, may read a tad raw.

My greatest gift of 2020 is that so far I’ve managed to get through it... just a few more weeks left until it won’t qualify for the enddate on my headstone. I still just barely qualify as “playing with a full deck.”

I’ve still got both Jokers, that’s all I’ll say.

I voted democratic in previous presidential elections, but didn’t in later ones. Most of our local reps are typical career-wonks who’ve never punched an honest timecard in their over-privileged lives. I can hardly believe we keep granting them another term, to keep waddling to the bank.

I’ve seen so many people championing so many causes over the decades, that have all become irrelevant with time. Only the times have changed.

All the old secrets are meaningless. Any “blatant illegalities” have by now certainly fallen to a statute of limitations, in light of present-day wrongs that have topped the old ones. Even the police who once cruised our neighborhood, if still alive, are sitting in rest homes talking about those ‘mean streets’ of four decades ago, chalking the tires of the potato-chip man’s delivery truck, or staking out the 7-11 for the Sunday morning hangover squad.

2020 was not a year of nostalgia for me, but writing about it has certainly stirred up a dust-devil of memories. In many ways I long to return home, but that’s the one thing I can never do – the 21st century is one of forward motion; gazes fixed upon a horizon, that may be just the edge of a cliff if we aren’t careful.

The holidays approach, and I’ve come to know this certain time of year as one of inner calm. I enjoy the exciting, yet also soothing, space of days between Halloween and Christmas. Sure, I see and detest all the rampant commercialism and chaotic self-distraction as much as anyone. I once regarded Halloween as my favorite holiday, but have come to see a new truth there as well – its pagan self-indulgence is even a bit more dangerous than Christmas’s, because it masquerades as ancestral virtue. At Christmastime we’ve come to make no pretense about the shelving of Christ and the embrace of brazen commercialism – that at least is an attempt at – perhaps incriminating – honesty.

The ancients had no monopoly on wisdom. They swilled just as hard, smoked whatever they could manage to roll and light, and were every bit as pleased with themselves. We just do it all better and faster because we enjoy modern time-savers like bottle openers and lighters, and our vice substances come conveniently prepackaged.

I think Halloween began its descent on my personal score card when I noticed it had ceased being a kids’ celebration of fun dress-up and candy, and become an adult altar-day for boozing and soullessness. I believe a certain contingent of people subconsciously use Halloween to let their pathologies breathe, or flesh out long-held secret yearnings, with a superficial belief that they are playfully mocking those things. Halloween, a holiday with pagan roots, and Christmas, with Christian roots, have both become national days of psychological valve loosening. What does that really say about modest girls who dress as sluts, butch girls who go as nurses and Little Bo-peeps. The mama’s boys as vampires. The geeks as powerful scifi warriors. The jokesters who become transvestites, never clowns. The bullies who morph into doctors or hobos (there’s a psychology term paper in the making).

At least one slacker or hipster obligates himself to show up as a priest, or even more hardcore... Jesus.

Maybe that’s the “honesty” I thought I was missing, but it makes me do a doggy-headwag. I stopped dressing for Halloween, and stopped formalizing for Christmas, a long time ago. Maybe I finally got to a place where I figured I’m too old to keep feeding my subconscious. I’m not better than you, I’m just up late over-thinking it all.

I still miss the kids dressed up, out having fun. That’s what Christmas once was too. Parents and kids enjoying some common ground. Halloween. Christmas.

Now my candy is sage stuffing, pumpkin pie, and good coffee. And I have an excuse to, sparingly, fall off my own wagon. The 2000’s were when I got serious about The Wagon. When I admitted there was a Wagon. And that I’d fallen off of it, and had been tangentially jogging along behind.