Ghosts Of Christmas Past

So I don't get to sleep early and while preparing for my drift-off, Mr. Bladder led me out of the bed and to the bathroom. Both roommates are home and it has not complicated my situation any. The leasee who is usually in a foreign country seems to have landed for a spell. Probably concert season is over. But we are the kind of guys who go into our rooms and minds our beeswax. We say hello in passing and it's just so very okay that way. But an added bonus is that he practices his stringed instrument in his room. And I totally mean it. In my last NYC apartment, there had been a student living in the building who practiced her saxophone, and when she played, the soulful sound echoed in the airspace outside my kitchen window, caressing the brickwork and ascending into the night air. It was like a cut on the soundtrack of my life, playing whenever I needed a good uplift.

Anyway, I went to the john and did my business. When finished, I turned to the mirror, as I often do, for a spot check on my appearance. I seem always to need to see if I look better to my eyes than I've done in the past (which could just have been this morning). Self-esteem issues and all that, blah blah blah.at

But tonight I saw something a little bracing. I saw a man three years older than my father was when I was born. I saw a man with a beard absolutely shot through with white hairs. I saw a middle-aged man. And then, when I dared to look deeper into his eyes, I saw my father looking back out at me. Dad didn't have much to say. It was only a split-second's worth of visitation, in fact. But he was there.

It could be that I realized it was Christmas, whereas I spent the Eve earlier today in a Starbucks getting my creativity on (holidays are the most productive times for me!) as if I were from a land where Christmas isn't celebrated. It's apparently a holiday for families and friendliness, and hey, I'm pro-humanity. But I had no intention to bond with my brother man. I just wanted to get out of the house and take advantage of the mild Winter. In fact, I just never want to spend an entire day in my room, isolated. Yet when I go do out, I don't seem to reach out. I'd rather just watch them all than talk to them.

So it seems as though I had a bit of a slingshot effect tonight in the mirror. The family that I tried to avoid lives inside my head, and they wouldn't go away. But what does Dad want? Is he jealous of my admiration of other fathers? Does he want his respect?

Sorry, Dad. You should have earned it.

But I'm no Scrooge and I don't need Visitations. As proof, I submit the following;

I bought these items in the weeks prior, for the first time.


And this is what it looks like when the flash goes off.

Merry Christmas!