Dorothy Dehner: Landscape for Cynics (1945)

"Merry Christmas might take any of a variety of meanings in any NextWorld."

When The Muse and I bought our Villa Vatta Schmaltz, we imagined it would eventually become the center of many extended family gatherings. I imagined that when my kids had children, The Villa would naturally become the over-the-river-and-through-the-woods holiday destination of choice for them, as my folks' place had been for me and my family in my time, but it hasn't. Our twelve-year exile opened space for different patterns to imprint. By the time we returned, we remained as off the holiday radar as we had been when exiled in Washington, DC, and Colorado, both places too absurdly far away and lacking any history for the family to reasonably consider as holiday destinations. So, those generations imprinted on other places for the holidays, though I hadn't reimprinted on this NextWorld until this just passing Christmas.

My Christmas gift was the Surrealization that I had been living embedded in that past notion, that what I had tenuously believed would be the case twenty-some years earlier would likely still eventually come to pass. If not this year, then next. This year, I finally visualized how it had been and began reconsidering how it might become. NextWorlds emerge like this as surrealistic visualizations. What was never not considered suddenly comes into focus, and some fresh interpretations can't avoid becoming obvious. It feels a little embarrassing because it often seems I should have noticed earlier, yet I hadn't. I suspect that regardless of how much earlier I might have noticed, I would have still felt as though I had been tardy, realizing. I also suspect there might be few instances where I seamlessly experience any Surrealizations. By nature, they'll probably always seem tardy.

This is how I perceive my existence: as if it were comprised of waves continually reconfiguring themselves. I don't intend to suggest that my watch melts into and out of shape, but the notions under which I interpret my surroundings certainly seem to be in more or less continual flux. What I believed to be underlying truth this morning might easily transform into a particularly insidious misconception by early this afternoon. Further, I seem to hold little defense against these occurrences. They do not appear in any way volitional. They run like tides, in and out of focus, present then absent. I know of no way to turn them off. My reality seems to be in near continual adjustment. I quite literally surf through my days.

This means that whatever I believe might well be up for reconsideration at any time. I dare not get too attached to any perspective, except I do dare to, and I do feel the detachments. They sometimes seem to rent me apart, simultaneously into then and now, there and next, betwixt and between. I usually settle somewhere near a new middle. I'm still settling on my new realization of the Christmas celebration, for it undermined what I had preconsciously understood to be the overriding underlying purpose of all the preparation and presentation. We might consider other types of housefuls in future years, but we dare not continue imagining what we're certain could never happen. I realize now that for The Villa to become the holiday destination of choice, another current location would have to lose favor. I would never deliberately attempt to initiate that sort of self-destructive arm's race.

It is as it is, and that's for the better. Yes, it seems a real disappointment, but the world remains just as it is and never merely how anybody imagined it was, though we usually imagine we inhabit the world we imagine rather than any alternative, however more credible. We have never considered all the other options and never could. We will continue imprinting upon whatever we imagined until we realize that notion doesn't closely enough match our surroundings. Then, we're challenged to abandon an old, if usually unacknowledged friend. I hadn't been very aware of my expectations regarding the family's holiday destination until I became aware of them. They had not seemed like notions until they did, and in that instant, they appeared to disqualify themselves.

I was then faced with the opportunity to begin actively living in the past, when that possibility still existed, or the present, where it clearly couldn't. It's no absurdity for anybody to deliberately choose to continue Surrealistically observing some past perspective as if it still held currency. Everybody lives some mix of past, present, and future convictions they hardly ever discretely acknowledge or consider as different from their surroundings. Our combination of convictions sums up our reality at any moment and, sure enough, steadfastly remains open for reconsideration. I do not yet know what conviction might replace the warming and welcoming one this Christmas season finally displaced. I have grown accustomed to celebrating the season vicariously from a great distance. I see glimpses of my grandchildren opening presents and clowning around in another house, one well enough suited to the task. My role now seems to have become to embrace this newly-recognized way it has apparently always been and to distance myself from what now seems was always merely fantasy, though heart-warming. Merry Christmas might take any of a variety of meanings in any NextWorld. This amounts to a happy new year, too.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz