Among the many other noticeable features today on Christmas Day was that which was welcome and noticeable for its absence; namely, traffic and retail occupation. The city lights were dimmed on all accounts. Yet precipitously the happy season of private familial absorption and revelry is over in an instant. The lingering Christmas decorations already appear superfluous, inconsequential, even garish. No more is there a burgeoning ambition to prepare for anything other than the New Year which (except for those who cherish a party or yearn for formalized drunkenness) is almost beyond redundancy.
With my now native curmudgeonly favour I as merrily recover the erstwhile habits of mundane living, spared the endurance of society and accommodation, relieved of the gastric memory of intemperance and gluttony. Old dogs…need I say more! From the psychical distance of Johanna Street, perched on our mountain of earth, peering at the frozen, snowy and uninterrupted passage of the river and fields below, all remains as it were before being overtaken by the hysteria that is the Season. Honestly I would not have it otherwise; but nonetheless the deprivation is cheerfully defended. At my age the jollification is work! I feel no need whatsoever to apologize for my insouciance. Indeed I consider it meritorious and practical though blunt. If Nature has thus instructed me by intuition or other incomparable persuasion to avoid that which I cannot do; I shall accordingly thrive upon that which it similarly instructs me I can do, albeit an essence of lesser conviviality. The plethora of seasonal music is retired. Perhaps it is too sudden to dispose of the Christmas cards; but their utility is soon to be exhausted as well. The Teddy bear with its Santa knitted cap will be put to bed for another year. Already the emails have begun to arrive proclaiming the retail savings at hand. I have long supplanted any existential disregard for the world of business by acknowledging its imperative of duality, to give as we get; and more spiritually to submit to the overwhelming allure of the craftman’s productions, the artist’s creations and the inventor’s mechanical achievements.
So begins instead the agenda of reform, the dedication to newness and change. Oddly in spite of my descent to such depths that easily promote renovation and reform, I have unwittingly opted instead upon retention of that which is both tolerable and sustainable. It is – as those ambitious words imply – a direction which is by no means unachievable but similarly it is lacking in liberality. I quell the adherence by recalling “it fits!”. As much as I enjoy the sartorial world, the greater peril would be to abandon what I already have in favour of needlessly prolonged deprivation. I shall instead acquaint myself with what is brookable and able to be upheld, credentials which seem to me more complimentary to and of age than youth.