12.25.2009

A Christmas Tale with Mr. Jack Happy

December 25th, 2008: 0413

Things were cold, then. Cold for Jack, and cold for the earth, the wind was bitter like an old man with no family and no friends. It turned his face a shade of festive blue, his lips cracking a wide smile.

Jack knew there was no room in this world for yet another poem about snow. It covered the surroundings and turned all things virgin white, pristine and so on, so forth. How many ways can one say that Winter is a time of death, hibernation, and purificiation, he pondered?
O Lord, thou art a four-faced phantom!
This face: white and flaky like canned biscuits!
Still, he felt compelled to mull over the icy landscape, the unshovelled sidewalls frozen with millions of shoe- and boot-prints. Dirty mountains of grimy snow were plowed onto the curb and left to melt on the sides of the streets. It was certainly a magnificent and beautiful Time of the Year!
O Mother, thoust nature is four-sided!
This side: chill like the store-bought Christmas ham!
Drops of ice-water fell on his head and sent shivers down his spine, as he stood outside the train station. Icicles had formed on all of the doorways and tops of windows, arcing their tendrils downward above him, menacing him. The puffy snow-filled clouds hovered overhead like bombers ready to strike. Jack needed ear-muffs.
O Father, yourst face has four hands!
This hand: turns the slowliest of all!
Short days and long nights drove Jack insane. The sun came too short, didn’t deliver on its promise of rejuvenation, and hid away from the cold dark. Doctors would just say he suffered from seasonal depression, but Jack knew better. Jack knew God hated the Cold, too—why else freeze the Earth, but to spare it the suffering?

Jack huddled for warmth, waiting for the train, and felt alone in a shared isolation, shared between him and the City. The City: she had fallen flat on her face, slipped on a patch of black ice, and didn’t want to get up only to inch forward, barely lifting her feet, in fear of falling, again. Things were cold, cold for Jack, and cold for her, too.
O Christ, mas o menos buenavista!
What ho? Ho, ho, ho, frozen peas!
(They’re even better when you’re dead!)

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