© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 127
Christmas is still on the way. The back-to-school specials have not yet made their appearances yet, so I know I haven’t missed it.
For my part, one of my fondest wishes is for a lot of cooling rain, though not enough to undermine the foundations of the wall around my garden. In deference to readers from the northern hemisphere, I live in the southern hemisphere, and there is nothing more darkly humorous that singing that song about a ‘white Christmas’ as the temperature edges up towards the point where preparing a turkey involves putting it out on the patio to roast ‘au naturelle’. All you can do is ‘dream on’, and try not to despise the thoughtless people who insist on including it in the Christmas repertoire.
As usual, my Christmas wish list contains nothing but wishes. In truth, this year’s gifts will be quite realistic. No yacht. No personal jet. No air-conditioned shack on an island hide-away. But then none of it would fit under a tree anyway, with the possible exception of the shack which would look marvelous under a palm tree.
Yet in spite of all the ugly natured pessimism and the ennui of despairing realism that seems to be the order of the day, optimism still looks good to me. I had one of those mind-boggling revelations in a book store, recently, that proved the point to me in a somewhat perverse way.
If you are a regular reader of this column, you will know that reading is one of my personal passions, though not just any book or magazine. While I was trolling through the shelves of the store, I came across not just one book that I have wanted to read for years, but two.
They both cater to readers with a love of stories, not the deep dramatics that pick through the sordid miseries of notional characters. Both of them fall in the scarce genre of intelligent fantasy, underpinned by interesting belief systems. And both of them are by an author who is scarcer than hens teeth, at least in the book stores in my town. Conventional wisdom would have had me buy both immediately. Yet I chose to buy one only.
My reasoning was this. In buying both the books, I would have read all of that author’s books. And if he retired from writing, or died tomorrow, I would have nothing to look forward to, at least in that genre, for quite a while.
So by masochistically not buying the book, and there was the small degree of physical discomfort that comes from wanting something so badly you can feel it, I have allowed myself what probably amounts to at least a few years of anticipation.
And as I look at it now, I hope to have given some other reader the pleasure of a really good read, perhaps even the discovery of a wonderful new author, at least from his or her perspective.
I now have something to be optimistic about, some hope for a wonderful, yet realistically priced, gift under the Christmas tree. And even if all the other material joy ceases now, I will still be able to look forward to reading that book.
As a father, I know that there is joy in giving, as long as it is not too complicated to assemble and the instructions aren’t translated directly from Japanese. As a human being, I also know that there is joy in getting. Yet that joy also comes from wanting. So in the absence of wanting something, there can be no real happiness.
There is a lot for me to want. I certainly want a long, healthy, happy life for my daughter. I want a yacht, a jet and an island. And I also still want that book. Some of these wants are realistic, others will take long hours of work, and others are probably not entirely realistic, for instance the rain, yet still worth wanting. As long as I want, I can have the fulfillment of getting and or achieving.
And as long as I want for myself or by proxy for my daughter, the space under the Christmas tree will still be worth watching. So although Christmas may be about good vibes towards everyone, or at least completely avoiding those whom you cannot find it in yourself to like, Christmas is also about optimism and getting.
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