CHRISTMAS 2009

The family gathered in Los Angeles as we have almost every year since the kids were babies. 

As the decades pass our numbers grow smaller, but the one's we've lost are never forgotten.

REMEMBERING CHRISTMAS 2006

Journal entries:

•December 24, 2006•

A traditional Czech Christmas dinner includes a baked carp. Two men have set up a table on the corner of our busy street. They have big, beautiful live carp in water filled troughs and people line up to buy them. The men pull the fish out by the tail then smash them over the head with a heavy wooden mallet. It's horrible. On and on it goes. Thud, thud, thud. It makes me think of that old Beatles song, bang, bang Maxwell's silver hammer came down on their heads. Puts me right off fish.

Two blocks from our apartment is the Flora, a three story shopping mall, lavishly decorated and full of shoppers. Credit cards are a fairly new phenomenon here so now the Czechs can dig themselves into debt with the rest of us. It's a real sign of prosperity when people can buy what they can't afford.

•December 25, 2006•

Today we went to a cousin's house for a couple of hours. She made sandwiches and cookies and that was our Christmas dinner. It was just the three of us. Now I know how lonely the holidays are for people without family. One year in Oakland I decided not to make Thanksgiving dinner and we went to a restaurant instead. I remember feeling so sad to see people eating a restaurant turkey dinner alone. To me the holidays are about family together telling funny and touching stories about years passed and remembering loved ones who are gone. 

So this was our Prague Christmas. Pretty dismal. But Christmas, like paying taxes, comes every year and there will be others.

VOICES FROM THE VOID

OK, so there is light in the cyber darkness. Thanks R. I guess a blog is as good a place as any to spill your guts. It's a little like eating food that has no taste but there's got to be some nourishment in it. 

I recently joined facebook to see if I could reconnect with lost friends from my years in the music business. I did find a few old friends but was also bombarded with friend requests from people I see frequently. When did talking on the telephone become obsolete? And will someone explain to me why anyone would think what coffee they had at Starbuck's is interesting to anyone else. I'm obviously missing  something. omg, I'm beginning to sound like Andy Rooney.

Here's a picture I took in Prague. No banal explanations necessary.

SPACE DUST

Writing a blog is like drifting weightlessly in space. Without connection it's dark, cold and directionless. I'm beginning to wonder if there is a point to blogging. Is it just a narcissistic exercise? Is it the sound of one hand clapping? Tonight I feel like space dust.

AMSTERDAM 2009

We've changed planes in Amsterdam many times on our way to Prague but we've never gotten out of the Schipol airport. This time we began our trip in Amsterdam. Our elegant and very expensive hotel was on the edge of lush Vondell park and right around the corner from the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. On every street there is a lane designated for bicycles and the river of cyclists flows day and night at reckless speeds. Little tinkling bike bells warn you to get out of the lane if you happen to step in one and you're far more likely to be hit by a bike than a car if you're not paying attention to where you're going. 

Amsterdam in Spring is green and mild. In May, as the plane descends into the airport, you can see miles of colorful tulip fields below on the outskirts of the city. It's like a color field painting from the air. I think charming, a word I don't often use, best describes Amsterdam. The distinctive architecture, the canals with slowly moving boats and people watching from the pedestrian bridges above, the easy going feel of the city make Amsterdam very livable.

In Andel Square we joined a large Hindu procession. We saw a special exhibition of Van Gogh night scene paintings at the museum dedicated to his work and a fabulous exhibition of Odillon Redon paintings the same evening. 

Yes, we saw the red light district, the coffee houses and watched break dancers in Leidesplein Square. But walking the back streets of Amsterdam in the evening under a full moon is the best way to see the city.

WINTER APPROACHES

Winter is coming early this year. We had rain all summer long, keeping the town green and verdant. As a consequence the locals are saying we will have a bad winter. Looking out my office window this morning Manitou Springs is blanketed in fog and the Garden of the Gods Park is invisible. The fog reminds me of the Bay Area. It makes me a little melancholy, longing to see the fog roll down from Wolf Back Ridge in Marin County and pour across the Golden Gate Bridge. I suffer from the restless desire to be anywhere but where I am. It doesn't matter how beautiful a place is, sooner or later I want to move on and see the other place. Why is it that some people can live their entire lives in a small town and never feel the need or desire to see the world? I meet many people here who declare with absolute certainty that Colorado is heaven on Earth. I can't help but wonder how they would know since many of them haven't even seen a fraction of this country much less the world. Is it mass hysteria or small town over compensation?

I've seen a fraction of this country and of the world and I know for certain that there is no such place as heaven on earth. If it exists at all, it's not geographical but spiritual.  A dingy apartment can be heaven on Earth to a couple madly in love. Someone at peace within themselves can be at peace in the middle of the worst city on the planet. But not me. I'm ready to move on. Summer in Colorado is over and the winter of my discontent is rapidly approaching.    

Passage from LOVE'S LOST & FOUND by Cheryl Ernst Wells

   As a child Fred had been frightened by the notion of an all-seeing God watching him every moment. But as a man he saw religion as self-medication against the injustices of life, the pain of loss and the fear of death. The notion of an almighty God seemed like a children's fairytale to him now and he thought only a simpleton or someone desperate could believe such nonsense. He understood that for many people church was a place of solace in a dangerous world and the congregation was a human wall of protection; safety in numbers. He couldn't understand how some people could justify the hypocrisy of behaving badly all week then piously on Sunday. Mys'tique was right. He was Godless but what she didn't know was that he wasn't faithless.

   He believed in the inherent goodness in people and that instinctively everyone knew the difference between right and wrong without the need of scripture. He believed that there was an intangible force that ordered the Universe, despite the appearance of chaos at times, and that everything good and bad happened for a reason that made sense in the greater scheme of things. Fred had his own personal doctrine born of experience and so far it had sustained him in a troubled world with an occasional lapse of faith.