Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve - here I am at the office blogging and waiting to head over to Midnight Mass at the Cathedral.

It's been a good day for a lot of running around.  I didn't get an early night last night.  Curse my self-destructive side!  I'd found a book at the place I mentioned yesterday, about the Keli Lane trial a year or two back, about a girl in Sydney who was so desperate to play water polo for Australia at the 2000 Olympics that when in about 1996 she fell pregnant, she kept it secret, had the baby at a hospital in a part of town where no-one would recognise her, and then left with the infant the day after it was born.  The child has never been seen since.  This only came to police attention about 5 years later, by accident.  Anyway, in late 2010 Keli Lane was convicted of murdering the child and is, if I recall, now serving an 18 with a 15.  Anyway, reading this had me up till (gulp) 4am, so I was a little slow on the move this morning.

When I actually did get into gear, I went out to USA Foods in the hope of buying butter marinade.  I got the very last one they had.  Not just in the shop, but the last one that they had in stock.  I think I have the only jar of the stuff in Melbourne!  Then, off to procure the other necessaried - a turkey, cranberry sauce and so on.  Then, back to the sharehouse to keep it refrigerated and then to the office.

The time at the office hasn't been brilliantly productive.  I think I've now come in here something like 28 days in a row and frankly, it's time for a breather.  I'll go to the parents' place tomorrow and Boxing Day, really just for the sake of logistics more than anything else.  I'm not sure what to do with the rest of the time off.  I just feel a little bit lost.

I've been doing my usual Christmas things whie I've been out and about today.  So, I've listened to my own particular favourite songs while I've been on the move (Tennessee Christmas, Hard Candy Christmas, a suitable amount of Bing Crosby, and A Charlie Brown Christmas).  I've re-read "The Journey of the Magi", and tonight I'll re-read the relevant bits of Luke's Gospel.  I dunno, it feels kind of a lot like it did before Joni and I got married - kind of as if the Festive Season is going on all around me, but without actually touching me, as if I were floating in a sort of bubble.  I'm not reading too much into this - probably just a mood, if you know what I mean.  No-one said being apart would be easy, especially not at this time of year.  Anyway, nothing a little rum and writing a letter and some skypage won't fix.

Well, I suppose I should post this and make my way to the Cathedral.  I hope you all have a good and joyful Christmas.  And for anyone who hasn't seen it, I'll post the text to "Journey of the Magi below.  Merry Christmas!

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.