Mixed Moss

The whole world is in myself. It breaths in God and breaths out Time. It is sterile, but it gives birth to questions. It grinds nations to powder and brews them into coffee. It pours Destiny into it’s coffee cup like cream and muses as it stirs. It sips and gazes into the universe, sitting still and silent at its axis as it spins and hurtles round the sun, and wonders what it’s own fate will be as it travels about it’s well-worn track, going in circles again.

My dad is in town this week. This means that he and I have been doing all kinds of lovely dull things, like going to the hardware store, sanding and re-painting the kitchen stairs railing, burning brush piles out back, and baking pasties (weird miner food that are basically like little turnovers with meat and potatoes and rutabagas; it’s a Minnesota/Wisconsin thing).

There is nothing quite like being outdoors on an unseasonably warm Winter’s day. The sunlight is thin, and barely warms the people crawling on the surface of the earth far below. I lie on my back in the brown grass and gaze at the sky, that particular pale shade of remote blue that you only see in Wintertime, the tips of bare trees crowding the edges of my vision, listening to the crackling of the fire by my side, smelling the ghosts of summer’s grass about me and the peculiar smoke produced by dry wood and Ed’s Red.* I close my eyes and dream of Spring.
*Ed’s Red is a home-brew gun cleaner containing, among other things, transmission fluid.

Is it a sign of a problem when you take your pills with coffee?

I have this emotional dependency on coffee. It’s quite sad, really. It’s not even a chemical dependency, because I drink decaf.

Now before you say anything, there’s a reason for the whole decaf thing. I just function better when I have little to no caffeine in my system. Really. It’s a more natural way of life for me. My doctor suggested it when I had some chronic muscle tension issues a few years ago, and I’ve found my inner balance to be better aligned this way. Besides, with Chuck Roast Coffee, the decaf tastes so good that your average un-trained coffee drinker probably can’t tell the difference. Even caf-junkies tell me that the Mexican Decaf is something to brag about.

But back to my dependency.

My love of coffee is something of a joke amongst my family. I have this ability to walk into a strange city where I have never been, and home in on the one place in town, whether it is a diner or a coffee house, where the best cup of coffee is available. This can come in handy when visiting relatives; sometimes you just have to get out of the house, and in such cases, it is handy to have an acknowleged destination as an excuse for your alone-time. An emergency escape hatch, if you will.

Conversely it can connect me to people too, of course. Hot beverages just magically bring people together, you know? Whether it’s coffee, tea, hot chocolate, cider, there’s something about joining people for a mug of something hot that creates instant understanding and good-fellowship. Eventually, if left long enough over cups big enough, the most unaquainted individuals will begin holding meaningful discussions. Burgeoning ideas that have been forming deep in the soil of minds that have been seemingly busy with shallow day-to-day existence will sprout forth like buds under the influence of the sweet rain falling from the warm cup down their throats to land in their hearts.

But even without a conversation partner, there’s something about holding a hot, rich-smelling cup of coffee that fills me with a rush of warmth. A deep well of comfort and contentedness bubbles up from somewhere deep in my ribcage and fills my nose with the breath of life, tints my cheeks with a rosy glow, turns up the corners of my mouth. A mantle of peace settles over me, and reassures me that yes, it is alright to start another day. Somehow, someway, everything is going to be ok. It is as if somewhere, mixed in with the antioxidants and heralded by a total lack of calories, there is an undiscovered nutrient that feeds not the body, but the soul.

Coffee. God’s own beverage. Life in a cup.

1) We had a British Christmas this year: Sunday roast with peas and Yorkshire pudding, and a sticky pudding for dessert (the sort with cherries and chocolate in it and decorated with holly sprigs). Sam and Rachel, I’m sure, will appreciate that one.

2) I watched White Christmas and Pirates of the Carribean on TV. Now, that’s my kind of holiday programming!

3) New year’s resolution: learn to tap dance.

4) For Christmas I got tap shoes, Casablanca (alright, so my Dad burned the disk from TV. It still counts!) and a belted brown leather jacket, the sort a woman might wear with a fedora in a Humphrey Bogart film noir. Yes! It’s fabulous. So cool. I can’t wait to wear it with red lipstick.

5) I’ve decided that when I grow up, I want to be either a) Lauren Bacall, b) Vera-Ellen, or c) a pirate. Except that I don’t have the legs to be Vera-Ellen or the voice to be Bacall, so pirate it is!

To get my new career off on the right foot, here’s a sea shanty or two. Read the rest of this entry »

If it weren’t for that whole Christian thing, Christmas would be awfully depressing. Not merry at all. Certainly not the most wonderful time of the year. In fact, I’m sick of Christmas songs that tell me to be merry, joyful, and peaceful when I’m feeling anything but. I hope that doesn’t make me a scrooge.

I mean I personally find that most of the commercial end of Christmas leaves me cold. Think about the message Christmas commercials and TV holiday specials send!  Marketers spend tens of thousands of dollars to swear up and down that if we just buy their toys for our kids and their cookie sheets for our baking and their holiday shimmer blush for our faces then the kids won’t fight and the food will be perfect and we’ll look like Julianne Moore and everything will be as fabulous as a TV Holiday special! And then, we will be happier and find life more fulfilling. And we silly fools buy it. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year my grandmother makes cookie trays. She gives them to neighbors, family, school teachers, etc. This year my family isn’t going to her house for Christmas for, like, the first time. So I made “grandma” cookies for our family. Here’s a picture. Not quite the astounding variety my grandmother achieves, but I’ll improve next year.

We don’t dare put up more than lights and ribbon. Even with those we keep a close eye on her– lest she fall and get caught in them. Doesn’t she look possessed? Her eyes reflected the flash.

My sister’s cat, Reagan (yes, she is named after that Reagan– what? It’s a good, strong Irish name!) climbs our Christmas Tree. It is not a real tree, and she has no front claws; but so strong is her urge to climb that she hikes herself up with her front legs until she’s six feet in the air and can no farther go. This is the second year running with this problem. It’s becoming an annual tradition. And it’s really upsetting to my mother, because it means she can’t put any breakable ornaments on– or any with yarn or ribbon to shred.

Advice? How do you keep your cat out of the tree?

I don’t approve of gambling. Especially the lottery. It seems to me absurd that the Great State of Ohio, as it is called, or indeed anybody, should make money off of other peoples’ ignorance and misfortune.

But it occurred to me today that we are all gambling.

I read Parke’s post on Living the Fairytale, and the last two lines invoked a gut level response in me.

“Maybe there was hope after all the brokenness though. Maybe the impossible does happen more often than we know.”

My immediate response? Well, there had better be. Why? Why had there better be miracles? Why had there better be a fantastic, unbelieveable, beyond-all-hope rescue, a fairy-tale ending, at the end of Life’s story?

Because it is my only hope. I live my life on the chance that there will be a rescue. I’m hanging on for dear life, just like those people who climbed to their rooftops to escape the flooding of New Orleans, and prayed for a helicopter.

So that’s what I’m staking my life on. I’m betting that God exists, and that if I can just hang on long enough he’ll come through. I sure hope I’m right, because I’ve put all my eggs in one basket; betting it all on one number.
So what are you betting on?

This week I giggled (between prayers) over the fact that there was a terrorist bomb scare at my Grandma’s mall (where my cousin Khristina works) in Illinois and a tornado in London. Wait a minute…