Foggy Nights on the West Side

Blogging now from the Pacific Coast, on the same computer I used to start this blog about sixteen months ago. No, seriously.

I don't type as fast as I used to, maybe because I'm getting older, probably because I'm more tired on a more regular basis these days. Nothing a little sleep can't repair. It's just that I'm about twelve thousand hours into sleep debt and have the equivalent of three credit cards, each being used to pay off the balance on the other. You can only keep that up for so long. Probably time for me to batten down the hatches and really get rested up for the long haul, which looks to be just over the horizon.

I'm not exactly practicing what I'm preaching now, though. I could be in bed. I could be on my way to bed. Instead, I'm just chilling up here, blogging away, fully dressed, knowing I should go to bed but consciously avoiding it.

I'm enjoying the foggy night instead.

I like the foggy nights. I'm surprised it's foggy here now, too - with the temperatures and the sky conditions it could easily be the middle of summer. Instead, it's Christmas Eve, and it's socked in, as we like to say.

Does Christmas Eve still have the same luster it once did for me? I used to look forward to those two days for about 364 other days, because I was almost always happy on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, no matter what. It was the time when I got to be happy again, for sure. I knew what day of the week it was but just totally didn't care. It was an event. It transcended a schedule or a calendar. It was just a time to be at internal peace, smiling within and without, almost forgetting that I was a kid with many of the issues and problems facing most kids my age at every stage of the game. The spirit always transformed me right around the last week of December.

Oddly enough, I have spent Christmas Eve doing almost exactly the same things, although at different times, since I was about three years old. No kidding! It's more than a personal tradition. It's a ritual, at this point. I try to improve with each iteration. It's variable, but it's fun. I always get a kick out of it.

Like this afternoon, for example. I gazed out my window at the hazy glow of the sunshine around 2 in the afternoon. The waters of the Pacific magnified the sunlight, so that I really did feel its intensity even more than I usually do as it was streaming through my window and bombarding the doorwall of my old room. Immediately, I remembered that what I was seeing was almost the exact same view - including weather conditions, although it was colder last year - as I saw on 12/24/04. That was bizarre. One of those deja vu episodes that kind of freaks you out because it literally takes you back in time. There are few of those. Many of them are tied to the surprisingly evocative sense of smell (instant nostalgia!), but you still get moments like those. Come to think of it, the view on Christmas Eve from that same window seven years ago, when it was a very cold day by San Francisco standards but still a little warmer than the few days before, was almost identical. That's a trip.

Would it be more accurate to say this entry is deteriorating into stream of consicousness or progressing towards stream of consciousness?

I think I'm tired enough that I'm heading towards a stream of unconsciousness. Not even a double espresso would help me now...

The fog is starting to thin out a little bit, but it still feels like a nighttime blankie. It can be fearsome at times. I still like to think of it as a gesture of benevolence, a kind of protection and comfort. It reminds me of both my roots and of my source.

Now the time has come for merry mirth...