Lovis Corinth: Cain (1916)

"No whining!"

Two days into creating my Christmas Poem Cycle and halfway finished, I encountered a definite blockage to completion. I caught myself seething inside. I have been holding an anger, and the old, probably incorrect definition of depression was "anger turned inward." The idea apparently was that inward-aiming anger might fester into deep self-destructive sadness while anger aimed outward might at least dissipate, perhaps even harmlessly. But we live in an era when anger has turned outward, which has resulted in considerable carnage. School shootings seem to have become a daily occurrence, and what are those but outward-focused angst? You must have played hooky through those years if you were not seething through middle school.

My challenge as a poem writer involves poisoning the well. I do not want to create a batch of seething Christmas poems. I figure those would hold no utility. I want my poems to exude peace and goodwill, and I'm finding this difficult to project while seething inside. In the past, I have been fortunate to figure out how to reframe troubling situations to de-fang them. Sometimes, accepting some situation as a feature rather than a problem successfully de-fanged it. Sometimes, but not always, especially when the annoying premise gets reelected to an undeserved second term, during which he seems determined to undermine civilization as it has well-served us. That one's hard to dismiss as a mere feature.

Also, a young man continues chalking hate phrases all over our charming downtown—just the spirit we want to share during this season. The place resembles Pottersville now more than Bedford Falls. I've tried to do my part, washing off the hate with cleaning vinegar and a stiff-bristled brush, but he keeps returning. I spread lime on one sidewalk, thinking of fighting chalk with chalk, but that proved challenging to spread, producing poor coverage. I got the stuff all over my pickup. The vinegar is slow work but satisfying after a fashion. I realized this week that my good intentions would never cut it. The terrorist will always keep coming back. We need an organization.

I need to visit with the head of the Chamber of Commerce and a few other leaders to see if we might muster a more focused response. Some MAGA judge up in the Redoubt part of the state declared hate speech chalked on municipal sidewalks protected by the First Amendment. This ruling was stupid, but it still holds until our city's attorney drafts some counter. He's been studying the problem since at least last summer with no proposal. Meanwhile, the hate speech proliferates, and I catch myself seething at the pure inequity of it. I'm thinking of spreading garden gypsum on those sidewalks next, a messy chalk vs. chalk solution that might annoy the shopkeepers enough to organize themselves into doing something. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you, too.

As Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, "If it's not one thing, it's another. If it's not this, it's that.." And so on. When have we faced Christmas without distracting seething going on in the background? Rosanne Rosannadanna was right. It's always something, so after so many decades with some Always Something haunting my celebrating, I might have stumbled upon some resolution to this damned-whatever-I-try dilemma. I have not. My monkey brain continues plotting, seething, even through the most otherwise silent night. I confided to The Muse that I've never ridden on a one-horse open sleigh. Maybe that would fix something.

My NextWorld appears poised to be more of the same. Most of the earlier distractions I believed I might outgrow are still with me. I did manage to put tobacco in its proper place, but I face my future remarkably unreformed from my earlier incarnations. The notion that humans might evolve at scales observable in our own lifetimes seems as absurd as a belief that Christmas might occur with peace on earth and actual goodwill to others. Christmas, like life, might be aspirational, and to mistake an aspirational for a supposed-to-be might be the source of most tragedy in this world. It was not supposed to be otherwise. Merry freakin' Christmas, and hope for a happier frickin' New Year, too. No whining!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz