No Horse, and no Sleigh

To my way of thinking, the most amazing part of any religion is the part that asks a person to suspend logic and just believe in magic (or faith).

But even that idea is revealingly ethnocentric, as I have learned from my many friends and lovers from other cultures. Most people in this world actually believe in ghosts, spirits, little beings, and other inexplicable forces.



But in our empirical world, everything we do can be measured, and is. Apparently, as Americans, that means our consumption habits establish how much we matter. Mind you, as an old Marxist (since reformed) this offends me deeply.

But in the spirit of being a true-blue American, I am about to reveal to you my most inner secrets (apparently) in the form of my consumption today, the "last shopping day of the year before Christmas."

Ugh, I hate crowds, spending money, and most stores. This at once makes me both a typical male and an un-fun companion for most females. But, over the course of my already quite long life, I've learned to moderate my biases and preferences now and then to accompany the females in my world.

Let's put it this way: If you are a female and have ever had even one good shopping experience with me, that was as large an expression of my love as I have to offer to you.



Let's leave all of this philosophy for some future digital archeologist to reconstruct, shall we? Today, two of the most important females in my current life and I invaded the downtown shopping sector. We found shoes (for my 10-year-old) and shirts (for my 14-year-old) for a total expenditure of $75, ate lunch ($30) at a diner, and paid for our parking ($6), so that comes to $111 we inserted ino the American economy on this, the last shopping day before Christmas.

Personally, I'd rather fantasize about Santa Claus, and all the stuff he might bring me. But that, of course, is better discussed either in therapy or with the cops who wonder why you are wandering around alone on this, the night when anyone with any kind of intact family isn't alone but deeply embedded in the familiar folds of unquestioned love.

Do not misread me. I am not on the street; I am in my home, surrounded by the evidence of the love from so many who sustain me, but tonight my heart is with those who do not have what I have. They don't have money, so they've spent nothing. In American terms, they are of zero value.

Rather like the baby born 2,008 years ago in a manger, no?

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