My thots on Xmas morn of 2018

NOTE. Please don’t read this post, if you haven’t read any of my last few posts; because this present post is lousy, boring, uninspired — it was written under duress, while waiting for Christmas to attack: it contains no energy and is basically just a prisoner’s pre-execution whimperings. Rather than skimming what follows, I’d even prefer that you skimmed instead my jokey post about the true meaning of the holiday (“Essay on Xmas 2018”), which is one of my least liked posts that I ever have written.

But, actually, no, I take that back. Don’t read any of my posts. Neither this one nor the others. Go read one of the major newspapers’ articles instead. Or go look at a magazine. Or buy a book recommended by that lady whose talk show is popular.

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Now here below is the next page from my book titled XXX Drawing Prompts. (The Roman numeral "XXX" equals the number 30, but I really meant 300.) The last time I shared a pic from this sketchbook was yesterday's post, whose prompt was "Boombox"; to create THAT image, I followed a general principle: I said to myself, Dear Self, just take up into your arms the local junk-mail that arrived at your house today, and use a scissors to snip the first photo that you see from each unwanted item, until you've filled the allotted space; then call it a day. ...But, now – or, rather, then; which is to say, after the above artistic effort – in order to create this CURRENT masterpiece (which, I repeat, should appear directly below), I was faced with a real challenge, because the blank page that served as my canvas was divided down the middle by a thin black line and contained not one but two distinct prompts: "Jack-in-the-box" and "Goblet". So, because I am lazy, I returned to the aforementioned accumulation of junk-mail and clipped this picture from an advertisement for meatballs. So what we have here is a woman holding a plate. And something about her reminds me of Christmas. (Thanks for enjoying.)

Dear diary,

You know how, when you get the common cold…

I don’t know how to put it, and I’m not in the mood to try. I was just wanting to compare this day of Christmas to the common cold, because you’re helpless in the face of its mild discomfort — there’s nothing you can do but wait it out.

And Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s a whole fucking season. (Here I use the word fucking deliberately, because it’s just the type of vulgarity that those who love this holiday hate.) I enjoy the music and the lights, and I admire the people who genuinely rise to the occasion and become ultra-compassionate. But there’s a nasty tension in the air that accompanies all this goodness, which pervades the social sphere and ends up dominating the festival. It always gets its way; one can only put it off. Against possibility, this year I was determined not to let the nastiness win. I did not succeed. But I didn’t fail miserably: I lasted pretty long — I made it all the way to Christmas Eve. Then I lost my patience: I threw a big tantrum, and shouted all the harshest swear-words I know.

Biological family, as opposed to true friends, is like something sent by the Devil. Not the Devil from Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell whose party I’m a very proud member of; no, in this one instance I mean the Devil of the disordered brains of paranoiac Christians: the Devil who’s bent on causing harm. This Devil created the notion of honoring one’s biological family, in order to guarantee that the best of us will feel psychological torment. You could be the most longsuffering, merciful, tender-loving soul in existence, and yet your biological family would possess that one particular trait that gets your goat; and they’d evince this trait, this tick, this bug-made-feature in a way that maximizes its irksomeness: but only YOU feel the twist of that knife — that’s the genius of the Devil: nobody else even senses the detail that drives you to distraction.

I’m for the lonely people. The souls who depend upon spirits to get them thru Christmas.

Goddammit, must I define every word that I use? Here, by spirits, I don’t mean the entities that visit wealthy businessmen in their beds on Xmas Eve to warn them “If you continue thus, the result will be thus” — no: I mean strong distilled liquors such as brandy, whiskey, gin, rum, absinthe. Firewater, hooch. Hard stuff. Straight vodka. (The volatile fuel for exuberant prophets.)

I’ve never understood how families can naturally LIKE Christmas. But maybe nobody actually cares for the holiday — maybe everyone simply pretends, until their feigned cheer becomes habitual and thus resembles an unforced disposition. Ultimately, then, their fake glee appears seamlessly innate, when viewed thru the eyes of puzzled, naive, alien cyborgs like myself.

I always hated my parents. Wouldn’t that suck if your own child hated you? And I was their firstborn, so that must’ve really suckt & bit for them. Age two, three, four and beyond, I’m always the same: I hate mom and dad, & I hate Christmas. To hell with your gifts, you have no idea who I am: you’re not even attempting to perceive the Real Me.

And now we’re all grown up, in my family; we’re all in our thirties and forties. But nothing’s changed, at least on my side: I still don’t believe anyone gives a fig about my actual worth. I’m more like a big doll that they’d like to position at the table, for the Christmas meal, and for pictures. A big mute doll — that’s what would truly make them happy: if, this year, I lost my ability to speak.

Why is it that we gadflies are so universally despised? I’m fascinated by each and every member of my family, but not one of them is fascinated by me. I want to hear everyone’s stories and opinions about everything: I want to absorb every detail of their thots; but they don’t reciprocate this interest: on the contrary, I can tell they’re all individually wincing, worrying when I might blurt out the next offensive remark.

I want to stress that I don’t TRY to be offensive: it’s not my intention. I never want to cause others offence; and I don’t like those people who attempt to shock and cause harm. I hate shock art; I yearn to inspire and uplift. But I love the truth, and I’m addicted to honesty. And this is a recipe for disaster, when the holidays strike.

Keep in mind that I’m writing all this in the morning, before we meet with family. We’re supposed to go over to my mom’s house at fifteen hundred hours, that’s three of the clock. Most families meet up on Christmas Eve (not day: EVE), for their festivities; becuz then you can catch Santa with his pants down. But once Christmas DAY arrives, it’s too late. Santa’s already infiltrated your chimney and left his calling card under your tree. But the reason we’re meeting so late is that my brother and his wife and their newborn baby had their schedule entirely booked up this holiday season: they had like five other Christmases to attend; and ours (the Ray Family Christmas) was the lowest priority. We get the dregs of the Christmas jocularity.

When I overhear myself complaining like this, I’m lured to counter my foul mood with superior imaginations; so I ask myself: What would you prefer that Christmas be like? Now, attempting to answer, I’m ashamed at my momentary silence — I can’t think immediately of a better alternative than this wooden false merrymaking that I associate with the occasion. I guess I should admit that I can’t do better than tradition, in this case — I have no ideas. — ...Unless we all, as one big awkward family, sit down together to screen the film Wrong Cops (2013). That would truly make me glad. My mother and siblings all gathered together on the sofa for Officer Duke’s lecture on sonic appreciation. (“You have to listen with your gut — this is where music happens. Do you understand what I’m saying? In your guts; in your organs... AFRICA!”) — But I don’t want to coerce anyone to become a better person. You can’t force genius: you can only make it feel welcome, when it comes. And that’s the difference between me and thee, Father Christmas. Your holiday is an attempt to summon affection by way of hogtying humanity. It doesn’t work as well as freedom. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

By the time of the earliest Sumerian documents, the principle of lending at interest, even compound interest, was already familiar to everyone. In 2042 BC, for instance, a royal inscription by King Enmetena of Lagash — one of the earliest we have — complains that his enemy, the King of Umma, had been occupying a huge stretch of farmland that had rightfully belonged to Lagash for decades. He announces: if one were to calculate the rental fees for all that land, then the interest that would have been due on that rent, compounded annually, it would reveal that Umma now owes Lagash four and a half trillion liters of barley. The sum was intentionally preposterous. It was just an excuse to start a war. Still, he wanted everyone to know that he knew exactly how to do the math.
     Usury — in the sense of interest-bearing loans — was also well established by Enmetena’s time. The king ultimately had his war and won it, and two years later, fresh off his victory, he was forced to publish another edict: this one, a general debt cancellation within his kingdom. As he later boasted, “he instituted freedom (amargi) in Lagash. He restored the child to its mother, and the mother to her child; he cancelled all interest due.” This was, in fact, the very first such declaration we have on record — and the first time in history that the word “freedom” appears in a political document.

That’s from David Graeber’s Debt: the first 5,000 years. I give it here, just to help spread the gospel. It doesn’t really have much to do with the holiday, or with anything I was talking about above; but when I said to Father Christmas that “hogtying doesn’t work as well as freedom”, and then I quoted that line from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12), it made me want to prove to you that there is a connection between these two ideas. The original meaning of freedom is debt-forgiveness. So when our fellow U.S. patriots keep praising freedom, talking about bringing freedom to the rest of the world, and saying that they fight for freedom and therefore that we should all put the X back in Xmas, I want to chime in and say: I wholly agree, for Christ himself commanded our banks to forgive all debts. Student loans, mortgages: no more! Merry Christmas, ho ho ho!

I wonder why I’ve been harping on debt so much lately, beyond the simple fact that I love Graeber’s book. For I don’t really have a problem with debt myself; I mean, I think my mortgage is unfair, but it’s not absolutely crushing me yet...

Ah, but then I consider all the stressed and miserable faces that I see when glancing around the dinner table, during the holiday feast. I grow indignant on behalf of these gloomy souls. Cuz I can’t be happy until every single living thing is happy. And that includes the souls of Guatemala Honduras Venezuela and the former Soviet Union. (Those are just the first few names that come to mind — I like how they sound when they roll off the tongue.)