Observations from the Road 12.27

Christmas always seems to come and go in a heartbeat. Shopping, stressing, and traveling and than you wakeup on the couch at 1:30 in the morning and realize it's past for another year. I always stress and get a bit depressed this time of year and this year was no different but it was better than it has been. Either I have been keeping so busy I didn't think about or it is true that time heals all things, I just didn't let it get to me this year. At the same time I had this lurking suspicion that after this year Christmas will never going to be the quite the same again. I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way, just the feeling that we as a family have reached one of those moments in time where the dynamics change. My brother with a girl friend, my sister a constantly amazing young woman who is soon to be a political science major, and me with my mind drifting off to other things.

For better or worse I now seem to be more at home in the Village than I ever have. I woke up in the middle of the night Christmas morning and never did get back to sleep. Even though I had nothing special on my mind but I couldn't stop thinking. The only theory I can come up with is that it was just too damn quiet. I love going home and go every chance I get but lately I can't stop wondering what is happening while I am there, maybe a sure sign I need more downtime.

And what was happening? Christmas Eve night about one hundred protesters held a candle light vigil outside the New York Stock Exchange. The hand made candles were a clinched fist with a raised middle finger, the flame rising from the tip. On Christmas day, in celebration of both Christmas and the hundredth day of occupation, OWS planed a potluck supper at the still fenced off Liberty Square. In a totally petty move straight out of Dickens NYPD stopped some from taking trays of cookies and pies into the park. Not to be stopped the Christmas dinner, and for some a communion, was held on the sidewalk outside the barricades.

I found this in a blog, “Just as you don’t need a tree to celebrate Christmas, you don’t need a park to Occupy Wall Street. Merry Christmas, Wall Street. You are still occupied.”

And so it goes.

A belated Merry Christmas to everybody.

The Corrs - Merry Christmas, War is Over