Sunday, December 10, 2006

The Spirit of Christmas

That sense of something special in the air hasn't gone away today, and I was expecting it to. But I can't explain what it is; it defies analysis. Once you get into conceptualising anything, anyway, you go off into your own mind and lose your connection to whatever it is that's out there: Zen people have been telling us that for centuries. MU!

All I can say is that to me it's like some sort of electrical charge hanging everywhere that somehow carries all our collective hopes for ourselves and our loved ones, all our secret dreams and delights, all the things about us that are good and open and giving rather than sad, cynical and lost. There's an intimation of the love and tenderness of all the generations that have come before us in the air as well. Step anywhere and it's like the dead are close enough to touch. I could feel it walking around the Disney Store in Northampton today, with kids running around everywhere and Kermit the Frog singing something from one of the giant televsion screens. But I could also feel it sitting on a cold fence an hour later in Northampton Bus Station watching two women who looked like hookers sharing a can of Fosters lager and trying to skank a light for their cigarettes from everyone who passed.

It's either a trick my own mind is playing on me because I happen to be in a good mood lately, or I'm really onto something. Frankly, though, I don't care, because I'm rather bewitched by it anyway.

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