Once There Was A Christmas

Once There Was A Christmas


A yearning calls in my heart for a place that holds me in thrall.

Across the rolling fields of childhood recollection I look to what
in fondest hindsight distortions is still in good repair.
Dewy eyed, I dream of that pure childlike greed which
filled me like a pitcher as I stood in chilled morning vigil.

There was the tree. Stock still stood the spangled pine.
In splendor laced and multicolored beauty the branches
Waved the mirror orbs and waited
with me in cold anticipation.

There was a pile under the tree. Virgin wrapped,
the crisp papered packages jumble-piled upon each other
in chaos of plenty.
Such simple guess-filled waiting made the coming day shine
as I counted the booty with my name on it.

Finally the daylight.

There was a fireplace. Oft neglected hearth of the home, it was
fired and warm on this special day. Firebrick white it
shimmers in my memories. Warm and
woodsmoke-choked it condenses to a brightness.

There were stockings by the fireplace.
Huge and full of loving goodness, trimmed and brimming.
To me they were the best.
Candy and doo-dads, silly putty and decoder rings, these
Poured from the stockings in mounds of plenty to quell
my avaricious heart.

Remembrances of the crackling eddies of the fire vie with the
Sweet-toothed excesses for supremacy. Backward
Visions of those single and precious days are layered with
Choral voicings, crèche scenes and candles.
They all conspire to impose awe.
Mashing grateful emanations from an older, but not wiser, heart.

The child understood and believed. And in his belief he
made real the stories of yore. Rudolf and Dasher and sleds
in the sky—Old men with beards, red suited and
belly filled—These came and shared a bounty
goodness.

Fables were told—Even of the son and the star.

Christmas is in the heart. A heart which never knows,
never grows older. Has never left the ages of the three
Magi and those silly, happy songs. I wish that
heart an hundred years. Years in which to tell those
pop-eyed faces the tales so true.

Years have come. And in their passage the days weigh harder.
Yet still there is a Christmas
and still there is the child.


~~Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner~~

Pre-Verbal Existence: The Next Chapter

Missing my brain somewhere phokes! It's just not been here.
I told a friend that I believe I have been "pre-verbal" for the last
few weeks. What I mean is that while working upon changing
my interior landscape I lost the wit to write well and was told
by many friends that I was not making sense most of the time.
This can be written off to the "Tibetan Rituals" which are a kind
of yoga I've been practicing and in the middle of the work, I've
been "zoning" out and staring at the walls a lot.

Don't get me wrong, I've not been unhappy, quite the opposite.
But I've not been able to write well so I have avoided it.

Now I'm back and I'm glad to have had this suspension. I
have been able to find more of my own heart as a quiet place
to be.

So much has changed in the world and yet, so much is the same.

Welcome Back Mr. Tanner... Have a cigar.

Stoned Immaculate

As Jim Morrison said in his "American Prayer" book,

" Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we is stoned
Immaculate."

Firey whispers in the night tell us of our solitude within the multitude.

I am a creature of my imagination. As I believe the bad tape rolling in my head,
there I will direct my fate. As I impose my heart's desire and believe that I
am renewed constantly by a truthful if not altogether kind source from within,
then I become that which I have said to myself I have sought to be.

And then I discover that the person I always wanted to be was waiting here
to greet me.

I will not be de-railed this time.

I will be.

I am.

(now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming)

More On Pleasure

I'm getting these really interesting periods of time wherein I am feeling waves of pleasure cascade through my body in slow-motion. All of this is contingent upon not locking down the pleasurable feelings and breathing through the experience but basically I'm experiencing these mini-orgasmic moments when I'm feeling very good all over my body.

The only downside is that it never lasts.

Also, I have lost the ability to eat more than a few mouthsful without feeling great pain and discomfort in my gut. I suppose all my friends who have followed my desire to lose weight will say, "Hey... Great!" but it is not so easy. What I am seeing is that we can easily become someone different than the person we've been in the past and "improve" ourselves but it comes with a price. We have to give up being the person we were comfortable with before.

I have come to see that I was comfortable with the fat slug me and his gourmand periods of expression. (bouts
of over-eating) Now I cannot do things the same way I did them before.

I react really strongly to alcohol. I immediately begin to sweat profusely if I put any in me. I feel good, but I
cannot put more than a couple of mouthsful of anything on top of the alcohol before I feel nauseous. Then when
I'm down, I feel an overwhelming need for protein (meat!) in large amounts... (then I feel nauseous from too much food)

Basically, I'm becoming new. I now see that the main reason why people have serious problems changing isn't the
change itself which is the problem, it is that keeping the change after it has occurred involves being willing to live
inside an amazingly different human being than the one you were comfortable with. There is a period of adjustment
which requires you to relax into a new way of being.

Not that I don't know that I will slide right back into the person I was. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I'm really interested in what happens now.