Boxes of Yule, or blank slatedness

2011 has phoned it in. You can't expect much. Its last few days are torn between a Christmas hangover and new year build up. Pull the covers up and hit snoooze.

But wait. Maybe because of low/no expectations, we should expect more. We can do with these days what we want. A week given to us by teachers and school administrators since we were in kindergarten. This week is ours, Fu$% yeah!

Having said that, it still feels like recharging time. A few Fat Tire ales. Some Woodford Reserve. Listening to the Roots "undun." Listening to Ambrose Akinmusire's "When the Heart Emerges Glistening." Reading Walker Percy. Reading Kabir. Contemplating Lewis Carroll. Readying my mind for David Foster Wallace, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." Morning coffee. Deciding what way to try to direct my body/fitness in 2012.

I'm not sure 2011 has a discernible theme for me. For that matter, I'm not sure any year has, aside from the year I got married (1999) or the years the girls were born (2002 and 2005). The attempt, I suppose, is to wrap a neat little bow around 2011 with these last few days. Or maybe it is to set it out on the curb with the Christmas tree, and boxes of Yule.

I'm not sure I can pull that off. I think I'd rather enjoy each one, in its blank slatedness. Its carefree aura. Happy week between Christmas and New Year's. May it be the best of the season.

Tastes Great... Less Filling

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mark Twain were both hip enough--forward thinking into our ADHD-ish society to write really big books with very few pages. They got across what they wanted to say and cut out the crap. Fitzgerald also created his own koan for people to spin their brains on, which is one of my favorites:

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

Dude, light is a wave and a particle. Miller Lite tastes great and is less filling. The kind of thinking that Taoism, quantum physics and relativity, and Zen Buddhism have been laying on us for eons.

In my mind, there is nothing cooler than watching your child's imagination get kicking into high gear. It can leave me giddy and in awe. We took our girls to see Tim Burton's version of "Alice in Wonderland" yesterday and our 8-year-old, Anna, and I traded observations back and forth and had each other busting up. It's been 17-ish years since I read Lewis Carroll (though I may be picking him back up soon), but a quote that figured heavily in the movie is one that we'd all be well served to have written above the door going out our bedrooms in the morning:

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

If your kids hold on to that, they can be world changers. But we don't have to write ourselves off either. I think grown ups have as much, if not more to gain from applying that thinking on a regular basis, when practicality says not to waste your time. Sometimes, it's best to bend practicality over and kick it square in the arse.

And that's my thought for a Daylight Savings dark Monday morning, half-way through a cup of coffee.