Finding. Not Searching.
What are you looking for? Exchanging expressions effects everything.
There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.
Mark Twain
Here we are. Are you looking at me? Because I’m thinking about you. Ever thought about that time you confronted a personal afront? Have you grappled a grudge like I have? You planted your feet and buried your head and now your ass is exposed. Check your power and cash that check. Next?
Winter weather brings about harsh realities. Holidays hope things that can never be. Holidays harken things that never were. Holidays herald things that will only be if wished upon a star. What are your wishes? Where is your soul? Who are you?
Who are we to demand or submit to an outside force that compels us to do good or bad? Hamster Wheels are the next Mouse Trap. Cubicles don’t define us they confine us. Bob Cratchits rebellion is his redemption. Are you Scrooge? I was.
The relief of redemption is revelatory. Bewonderment belies belief. Respite reveals resilience. We land on ideas for no reason and we reason with no idea. Our desires delineated, diagramed, and dismissed. For what? To be deified?
You’ve read the rants, vicariously vacillating without wavering or withering. Your supportive certitude signifies compassion and connection. I write for the heart, for that is where it all begins and ends.
Seasonal songlists surreptitiously subscript our senses. Before never and beyond forever, finding fabulous fabrications everywhere, our imaginations immersed in imagery, we live today and die tomorrow. Always denying but decidedly accepting.
Our fate more faith than foretold. Our destiny designed for diligence but determined by dalliance. Our utopia understood but unfulfilled. Who are we? Our complaints outweigh our completions. Our distractions dominate our dogma. We give up nothing and demand everything in return. And humph for happiness. Are we ok?
I’m happy, healthy, and human. I cannot ask for more. But I do. And so do you. And that’s perfectly fine. But what more is there? Rich people blow their brains out. Poor people smoke their brains out. What do the middle people do?
Work their asses off and do good and kind things. Ask for little and do more than asked. Giving much and getting nilch. Forgiving everything and forgetting nothing. Holidays mask much, but hangovers reveal reality. Bottoms Up!
The Santa images at top and bottom of this post are from A Pictorial History of Santa Claus. It’s a fun-filled fact-full trip across the centuries, especially finding things out like Christmas was thought of as “godless self-indulgence”. Cheers, the reason for the season.
Here are a few of my favorite Substackers. Speaking of Nazis, it’s hilarious when Matt Taibbi is labeled as one. Not just labeled, but smeared. Actual Jew-hating mobs are roaming the streets of our cities and the halls of our colleges, attacking actual Jews for just being Jews, but they’re not Nazis because they have black and brown skin.
Here, the head cheerleader of the Nazi Hunters - as long as they are white Jew-haters; brown Jew-haters are ok - screeds against Substacks “Nazi problem”. If Charlottesville was such an abomination, what the hell is Cambridge? Any fine people here?
That’s another dude that hates white people so much that he applauds killing babies and raping girls and old ladies so hard it cracks their pelvic bones. Oh yeah, one terrorist was reported to have done this
Police have privately shown journalists a single horrific testimony that they filmed of a woman who was at the Nova festival site during the attack.
She describes seeing Hamas fighters gang rape a woman and mutilate her, before the last of her attackers shot her in the head as he continued to rape her.
In the video, the woman known as Witness S mimes the attackers picking up and passing the victim from one to another.
"She was alive," the witness says. "She was bleeding from her back."
She goes on to detail how the men cut off parts of the victim's body during the assault.
"They sliced her breast and threw it on the street," she says. "They were playing with it."
The victim was passed to another man in uniform, she continues.
"He penetrated her, and shot her in the head before he finished. He didn't even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates."
Ok, pretty rough for a Sunday morning right? That gang-rape was on a Saturday morning. At a music festival for peace. That’s a street corner to view this war-wreck from. The Free Press is one of the best. Bari Weiss, formerly of the NYT, is inspiring.
The Pragmatic Optimist is tech-talk for the masses. Amrita found me and I’m learning things about money I didn’t know. Not just not know, but didn’t know I didn’t know. That’s her value - well worth a read.
Finally, the Christmas 2023 playlist. This is packed - 21 songs full - including Cher - the only solo artist to have a Billboard #1 song in each of seven decades. Toss in a few Hall-of-Famers (Cher is NOT), a song about sex with Santa, hard candy, hope, and a dream. Just what Christmas is meant to be.
I wish more good things come your way - today, tomorrow, and everyday. Stop searching, embrace the love that is just in front of us. Your heart is ready. You found it.
With love,
Ric
Just perfect.