Author: admin

It’s Christmastime. You know, Santa spoils your kids, you drink some eggnog, you put up with your relatives(again,) stuff like that. Everyone enjoys their extra day off, goes to work hungover, and waits a week to do it all over again, minus the presents.

It’s not that simple though, is it? I mean, it’s not for me. Humans like to paint with a broad brush. The truth of the matter is that everyone celebrates the holidays in their own way. Furthermore, not everyone feels the same way about the holidays.

I’m not just talking about people that celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, either. Some people have elaborate traditions that must be honored and adhered to. Others go through the motions, smiling around the growing ball of stress in their stomachs. Then of course you have the people that just want to blink and have it be over with.

It’s a fascinating look into the psyches of people. Christmas is unique in that respect. Few other measures cover so many aspects of the human mind with a single stimulus: Christmastime.

Now obviously most people first experience Christmas as children. This is one of the earliest opportunities parents get to pass down generational traditions and beliefs. For children, it’s their earliest exposure to the idea of such concepts.

My earliest memories only involve the jolly fat man bringing me presents on Christmas morning. We had to watch the Peanuts Christmas special, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. That was it, in the beginning.

There was no baby Jesus. There was no midnight mass or We Three Kings. My parents weren’t religious at all. I still recall with a smile a moment from later in my life that sums it all up quite well.

We went through a period of going to church and some of us, well, grasped it better than others. I said to my father in passing that we were Christians, and he replied “No! Don’t tell people that! We’re not Christians, we’re Catholic!”

Religion was not really our thing, is what I’m saying.

That moment came after my father remarried following my mother’s passing. My step mother was absolutely religious. She even had one of those cool/creepy Jesus figurines ripping its chest open to point at its little Jesus heart.

Now understand I totally fucking hated going to church. It was Catholic church on top of it, so even worse than normal church. Christmas was different, though.

I still couldn’t wait to leave church as soon as I got there, but there was something… different… about midnight mass. It had an altogether different feel to it than normal mass. It felt peaceful, almost magical, dare I say sacred.

At the time, I didn’t really understand it. I think I was between nine and twelve when we went to midnight mass. Looking back, I think it was the specialness of it.

It was night versus day. I was up instead of in bed. We sang old Christmas songs instead of those weird Catholic hymns. There was a charged feeling to the atmosphere, an air of quiet anticipation, all with that underlying feeling of sacredness.

While I didn’t miss my father’s second wife, I did miss that feeling when Christmas rolled around. It took a number of years to realize that it wasn’t the church I missed, or all the strict, arcane rules that surrounded it. I missed that quiet, peaceful, sacred feeling that came with Christmas eve.

Years later, I think I have a better grasp on it. We humans hit the ground running at top speed (some of us terribly hungover) at the beginning of the year. We don’t really get a chance to slow down and catch our breath until the end of the year grabs us by the face and makes us pay attention.

It’s like a good, hard slap. The year is almost over. It’s time to celebrate, though for many of us it’s just one more stress-point in a year full of stress-points. For people like me, it signals it’s time to realize that we’re nearly out of money and that life-saving tax return is so, so far away.

I actually see people getting angrier, not more cheerful, as the year draws to a close. Modern life has dictated that this be a stressful time of year. The bills pile up, we bleed money to buy gifts for everyone. Budgets get stretched to the limit. We drag our corpses out of bed before the sun rises to go to work until after the sun sets.

All during that time we are supposed to laugh, put on a happy face, and enjoy the season. Is it really such a wonder that everyone just wants it over? So few people remember the reason for the season, and no, I don’t mean baby Jesus.

For me, this time of year has become a time for reflection. It is a time to look back at who I was this year, and to make peace with it. It is a time to remember who I am, and try to find my inner peace before the race begins anew.

I think of the struggles I’ve faced this year. Somehow I’ve managed to survive the year without resorting to bankruptcy again. I’ve held together my marriage. My children haven’t devolved into bratty little hooligans.

I think of poor old Tom, my father in law that passed on two days before my birthday. I think of everything he did for me, how he transformed me. I think of how I will miss seeing his smiling face and listening to his boisterous stories.

I think of the reality that I am now a published author. I savor the reality that people actually want to read what I write. I must accept the reality that, at least for now, I will not make a living with my writing. I also must accept that, for whatever reason, nobody is interested in reading my second novel.

I revel in the fact that I ultimately don’t care, and am happily writing my third novel. I will continue to write and publish novels. I have nothing to prove, except that I will not give up.

These thoughts burn. They tighten my chest and bring tears to my eyes. These thoughts are who I am though, and I will learn to process and accept and fucking embrace them.

And as I sit here tonight in the dark, when the last of the presents are finally under the tree and a glass of scotch is in my hand, I will smile as I watch the lights twinkle.

Despite all that life has thrown at me, throughout all of the trials and tribulations, I have survived.

I sit here typing this, realizing that for the first time in a very long time, I know who I am again. I can accept my shortcomings again. And I can love myself again.

Yes, tonight I will sit here alone in the dark, soaking in the sacredness not of Christmas, but of the transition from one year to the next. The pain of the year will fade as the I prepare for the brightness of tomorrow morning. This sacred moment of silence when everything is possible, and hope can grow eternal, will envelop me once more.

May you all some day find this sacred peace. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and many happy returns.

I’ve been thinking about my childhood lately, for whatever reason. One place that I kept going back to time and again (both in my head and in my childhood) was the Berlin Mall, appropriately enough in Berlin, Vermont. It occurred to me that this mall saw me grow up and change, and it changed right along with me.

The mall, as best as I can remember, opened up some time in the mid to late eighties. Before then, the only option was the University mall in Burlington, Vermont. That was a forty-five minute drive from where I lived back then. The idea of having a place you can go to, with a whole bunch of stores, ALL under one weather-proof roof was amazing to me.

Going there was a treat for me. I still remember many of the original stores. The toy store was Kay-Bee Toys(later K-B Toys because… reasons?) Almost across from it was an independent pizza place. Further up was a magic shop (I believe called The Magic Shop?) Just past that was a candy shop where you could still get candy by the piece.

Further up ahead was the other restaurant in the mall: The prerequisite Orange Julius. They had the best pizza dogs in the universe. The other end of the mall had a flower shop, with a Walden books across from it.

Then there was a Footlocker, and an optometrist. There was a largish music store called The Music Shoppe that sold musical instruments and video equipment in addition to tapes and CDs. Up and to the left was a tee-shirt shop of all things. They even did custom air-brushed shirts. They didn’t last long.

Beside them was the mandatory video arcade, imaginatively called the FUN Arcade. It was a bit on the small side, but there was always something new to play for a number of years. Surprisingly, it played a smaller role in my life than the other stores, though it remained a constant as I grew up.

The Berlin Mall only had two stores to begin with: J.C. Penney and a Rich’s department store. A few years on it gained a Jo Ann Fabrics in the middle. I remember how much it blew my mind, seeing a huge store appear where once there was only a blank wall.

The mall became a much larger part of my life as both of my parents found jobs there. My mother worked at the pizza joint. My father worked at the Kay-Bee Toys. He would finish his stay there as assistant manager.

It was great fun for a time. I got to go hang out in the toy store with my father. I’d go over to the pizza joint to see my mom and have lunch with her. It was a classic kids’ dream, but it wasn’t to last.

The first change came in 1989. That was the year my mother died of Leukemia. It’s one of the prime reasons my memory of my childhood is so spotty. Needless to say, losing the person your world revolved around is profoundly damaging.

One of the most profound healing moments I had happened at the Berlin Mall, however. My father and I were hanging out with one of my father’s friends at the mall. He was a big guy that we all lovingly called Bear. He’d end up changing too.

But at the time, he was an anchor for my father, and almost a surrogate uncle to me. We were in and around the flower shop for whatever reason. I got it in my mind that I wanted to write a letter to my mother and float it to her with a balloon.

I wrote the letter, and my father got me a balloon from the flower shop, knowing that it wouldn’t provide enough lift to take it away. Surely enough, the letter didn’t even lift off the ground. In stepped Bear to buy a second balloon for me.

That didn’t do much to budge the letter, either. By this point, the story of what I was trying to do started getting around. My father, somewhat embarrassed, was telling Bear not to waste the money. Bear was pretty-well ignoring him at this point.

After about twenty dollars (in eighties money!) and a few contributions from others, my letter was finally buoyant. Bear, my dad, and I went out the middle entrance of the mall. Tears in all of our eyes, I let the letter go.

It floated up and up. Others stopped to watch the large wad of balloons as they soared higher and higher. I watched until they had turned into nothing more than a dot in the sky, smiling.

I think in my heart I knew the letter wouldn’t actually reach my mother. All the same, it was a large step towards beginning to heal for me. It was made possible by my father, Bear, and to a lesser extent, the Berlin Mall.

The years crawled by, and I grew older. Eventually I began riding my bicycle to the mall. It was a grand journey for me: About two and a half miles on busy roads.

I was a solitary child. We moved every couple of years, it seemed. I never managed to stay in one place long enough to make permanent friends. Over time I preferred to just be off on my own.

My trips to the Berlin Mall became my happiness. I’d take whatever meager amount of cash I’d managed to scrape together and find something cheap to treat myself with. More often than not, that was Bazooka Joe bubblegum at the candy shop.

There was more than shopping to be had at the mall, though. At one point during the summer there would be the boat show. I’ve never been much of a boat person, but it was impressive to see all those big, shiny boats inside the mall!

The prerequisite parking lot carnival would pop up once or twice a year. Then the circus started coming there. It was the only circus I ever got to see in my life. My most notable memory was riding an elephant that would eventually go on a rampage a few years later. It was ultimately gunned down by police.

Perhaps my fondest memories were from Christmastime at the mall. I remember walking there once in the middle of a snow storm. I went to the Orange Julius and used some of my pocket change to get a small coffee, the world’s youngest adult.

I had to go. I was going Christmas shopping, and there was plenty to sift through there. Every season, Christmas-themed shops would pop up in empty store fronts, or set up booths throughout the mall. You could get everything from hand-made ornaments, to statuary, to original paintings and everything in between.

I remember spending hours wandering around, just taking it all in. I was alone, but not alone. The mall had become my friend. It was someone I would come to visit, we’d have an adventure together, and then I’d go home to whatever.

Things changed as I grew older. Rich’s eventually folded, robbing the mall of one its most important anchors. A dollar store (incorrectly called All For a Dollar) also folded. It had been a treasure trove for a poor kid like me. The magic shop had died and gone long before either of those stores.

Over time, the magic began to fade. The mall had become barren, robbed of its life as people had fewer and fewer reasons to come visit. I was finding other interests as I grew, but part of me wept for this old friend.

Eventually, the world’s (seemingly) smallest Walmart moved in where Rich’s once was. The mall experienced a rebirth as shoppers once again filled its hallowed halls. Things would never be the same as before, though.

It continued to struggle, and so did I. Now out on my own, I took a job at that Walmart. My old friend had now become home to me. I was a cart pusher. I spent a beautiful summer getting thin and bronzed, prowling the parking lot for stray carts.

But Walmart is Walmart, and when I hurt my knee, they kind of shrugged and did nothing about it. I limped around trying to do my job for a few days, but to little effect. Eventually I just didn’t come in one day.

I went on to make a series of not-so-good decisions in my life that took me away from my precious mall. Perhaps, in a way, that was a good thing. It continued to change. Stores continued to move out and change hands.

I used to pine for my mall; to return one day and try to find that childhood magic I remembered so fondly. I don’t want to go back now, though. You see, my friend has grown up, too. He’s no longer recognizable to me.

It’s been a while since I checked, but I do believe every store I mentioned at the beginning of this article is now gone. I’m not even sure the arcade is still there. My best estimate would put maybe two stores remaining that date back to the earliest days of the mall’s existence.

Like me, the Berlin Mall has grown and changed. In some ways it’s been for the better, in other ways for the worse, not unlike myself. It stands as a strong symbol to me of the path life leads us all on.

We are born, and we grow. We find happiness where we can, before life and work take us away from what we’ve grown to know and love. We make do and find new ways to thrive and be fruitful.

But those childhood memories will be with us… with me… forever. I know now that I can never go back, but I can close my eyes and remember. For me, those memories are an escape from a world that has grown so, so cold.

I don’t miss the Berlin Mall, I miss what the Berlin Mall once was. I miss who I once was, but both of us have changed.

But I will always remember what we both once were.

Goodbye, old friend.

 

So lately in the news, they’ve been talking a lot about the GOP and stuff. You might have heard something. It’s nothing much, really… Just a flaming train wreck heading for a TNT factory…

Before I go any farther, I just want to point out that I identify as an Independent. In fact, no. I identify as an American. I’m tired of all this pick-a-side bullshit. Allow me to elaborate.

For years now, there has been a growing divide between the Republicans and the Democrats. Then Obama happened. Oh, BOY did Obama happen.

As usual, the Republicans were all like “Eww! A Democrat!” Once in control of like, everything but the presidency, they set forth to stop that Democrat from successfully doing anything, well besides the Affordable Care Act. We must stop this brown man, they cried! He is too Democratic! And brown!

This was the tipping point for the GOP. The idea of opposing teams became amplified throughout Obama’s eight years in office. It became less about getting their own ideas heard and utilized, and more about making sure the other team, the Democrats, lost.

Stopping Obama became a win for the GOP. Stopping the Democrats in any form was a win. Mission One for GOP: WIN. How? By making those dastardly Democrats LOSE.

Hell, if you want to boil down the 2016 election message from the Republican party, it was thus: If you elect US, we’ll make them LOSE! Then we’ll WIN!

Entering that same election, you had a large number of people in this country that were fed up with nothing getting done in the government. The Democrats (somewhat rightfully) pointed fingers at the Republicans as the reason legislation constantly ground to a halt. The Republicans pointed right back saying the Dems want to pass bills that will destroy the economy!

Enter Donald Trump.

Let me start by saying I don’t think Trump is exceptionally smart. I think he is exceptionally lucky, and conniving to a disgusting degree. This man got into the presidential election for one reason and one reason only: Free Advertising.

He’d throw his hat into the ring, get some free publicity. He’d go to NBC and say “See? I ran for damn president! GIVE ME MORE MONEY.” He’d get dropped in favor of a more traditional candidate, and then that would be that.

But something curious happened.

Those same people that had been worked into a froth by the lack of governmental action saw in Donald Trump an outsider. This dude’s gonna go in there and turn shit upside down! He’ll be his own man! He’ll fight for US and not THEM!

So the unthinkable happens: Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president of the United States. Why would they do this? This man does not know what he’s doing!

They were well aware of that. They were also well aware that he was their best chance of… Wait for it… WINNING. They’d just have to hold their nose and hope for the best.

Well, something even more curious happened.

Donald Trump won.

Thanks to a push by people desperate to get out from under the horrible, icky Obamacare, the Orange One grabbed the gold. He’d get rid of your Obamacare costs! He’d build a wall to keep out the icky brown people! He’d boost the middle class!

But let’s leave Donald behind for a minute(always a good idea. Heh.)

The GOP had done it: They OWNED the government! ALL of it! They WON! So… Now what?

The Republicans had become so focused on the Democrats losing that it had become a measure of them winning. They were in charge now, so they didn’t have to keep making the Democrats lose. They already lost!

This led to instant consternation in the Republican party. Some simply didn’t know how to deal with this new situation, so they started trying to make their OWN team lose, apparently. Starting with: Obamacare.

It’s no news that the GOP failed not once, but TWICE to repeal Obamacare, one of their campaign promises. Well, the senate failed. The house GOP members made damn sure to point out how hard they WON at repealing Obamacare. What the heck, senate GOP?!

That itching need to win started nibbling at the souls of the GOP again. They needed their Rocky moment if they wanted to survive the 2018 election cycle. Enter: Tax Reform.

Like the Obamacare repeal, things went sideways early. The idea was to lower taxes not only for the middle class, but for EVERYBODY! YEAH! Wait… That could cost a bit of change…

Interesting that the GOP is notorious for NOT wanting to inflate the deficit. They closed their eyes, held their breath, and said “It’s okay! The economy will improve so much that it will pay for itself!”

Fun Fact #1: No, it won’t. Not even close.

The current consensus is that the Tax Reform bill will cost $1 trillion in the long-run, while increasing the GDP by… 0.8%.

Well… At least our beloved middle class will get a tax cut! We’ll be delivering on campaign promises!

Fun Fact #2: No, not really.

Again, consensus shows that while some middle-class Americans will see short-term savings, ALL middle-class citizens will eventually see MORE tax debt as a result of this bill. Now the one-percenters? Heh, guess what? They’ll eventually pay LESS.

So they had a bill that would cost the middle class more in the long run, greatly benefit wealthy people and big business, and explode the deficit while not necessarily creating any new jobs or boosting wages.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

You see, this bill was also built up as a surefire way to bring tax money back to the US. Not only that, but these companies would be making SO MUCH MONEY that there’s NO WAY that they won’t hire more people and pay them more!

That’s called trickle-down economics, and it’s been proven time and again to not work AT ALL. The likely result: Big businesses will add the record profits to their already record profits and just absorb it all. Screw the little guy… Including the middle class.

Sounds like a no-brainer to just let this one go, right? I mean, they still wouldn’t have a win, but at least the voters would see the GOP was working in their best interests, right?

The bill passed the senate early Saturday morning with a single (retiring) member of the GOP dissenting.

THEY WON!

They successfully passed a bill that will hurt the middle class, explode the deficit, and greatly reward big business. They passed a bill that seemingly NOBODY (including some Republicans) likes or necessarily wants. WHY?!

So they could win.

Good luck to them doing that in 2018, by the way. The rest of us are tired of losing. Just saying.

Speaking of losing…

Back to Donald Trump, the man who had to win no matter what because the GOP had to win. Looks like he’s not winning so much anymore these days, does it? No border wall yet, no Obamacare repeal, unpopular tax bill… That’s not to mention the incalculable damage he’s done to the reputation of the US with other countries, including several allies.

Oh, yeah: He’s also possibly going to be impeached for breaking the law.

But remember, they won.

That’s all that matters, right?