A moment to record why I cling to holidays.
- Workdays are too damned profane and other-dominated.
- Holidays are - more or less - free days. A holiday is like the freedom we can never really have.
- Holidays are days to remember: family, friends, etc. Even I - who have no close friends anymore - remember my friends and cherish my more-or-less disfunctional family.
- Holidays are evanescent, like so many "good" things (ie, preferable or stimulating things) - they are usually pleasurable.
- Among others who also keep the day, there's a feeling of elation - marginal or not, but often there IS something there in people's moods and responses.
- Holidays that are taken to heart may have the last hint of the sacred left in our lives.
- Festive lights! Again, a pleasure, evanescent, of indifferent value, but felt.
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A Ghostly World in Collision with Yours
- Old Mr. Still Struggling with Ceaseless Chaos
- City: Let's call it "Fingiswold"...., California Franciscensis, United States
I only wish I could, like Beowulf, say:
"Hwæt! þu worn fela, | wine min Unferð,
beore druncen | ymb Brecan spræce,
sægdest from his siðe. | Soð ic talige,
þæt ic merestrengo | maran ahte,
earfeþo on yþum, | ðonne ænig oþer man."
"Ah, you've said quite a bit, my dear Unferth,
drunken with your beer, about Breca,
and laid out his triumph! But I say sooth,
that I owned much more sea-strength,
suffering the waves, than any other man!"
Yet I cannot!
Perhaps, like Epictetus, I may say, of the world and its evils,
"What is that to me? Is it within my control or a matter outside of it? If it is not within my control - and the only thing that is within my control IS my Will - then I shall not fret over it at all, but accept it and apply myself to it as best I may."
For the truth is - these evils are normal, they are natural, they are not (in the end) evil at all, just - consequent; and matters of indifference.
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