family business

do you know what is interesting? despite the fact that i somewhat take issue with christmas for the necessity of buying people things (and it's not that i am cheap...i dislike the economy propagating itself based upon an expectation or imaginary premise), for whatever reason i am completely comfortable with it when i consider the situation that my life is in. these are my family peoples; these are the people whom i truly care about and who will take me in regardless of circumstance. the dejected part about the holiday (which isn't the holiday's fault, so much, as it is a naturally-arising situation) is that it reminds me of how infrequently i actually get to see, get to spend face time with these people. family is an oddity in that there is a natural rifting of it at a certain point in a person's life....and it is likely a recursive theme as well, for i'm sure it will happen to me with my children, leaving me in a similarly set-apart stance of forlorn expectation. no, the thing is that despite loving these people so much, we don't get to see each other at all.

what i am finding, though, came as a surprise to me; an offhanded realization, a peripheral that it took me some time to see glinting. gift-giving may be cliche, but i absolutely want to do it....i want to thrust my purchases upon these good people with hope that they will express sentiments which i cannot, or at least, cannot from a distance, cannot over a telephone line or zooming electronic parcels. i hope that they do some damage to any walls that have built up between all of us. not walls that anyone would expect to be there....nobody in my circle, that i know of, has any grudges or misgivings which might set them distinctly at odds with me, or with each other, at all. we are a smooshily-happy family. but i consider, i hope these gifts to be the sweeping hands which might brush a coarse ivy off of a cottage-side, one which was beginning to be overgrown, overpopulated with seeds of tangled indifference.

i wish 'la noyee' was more than two minutes and three seconds long.

its not that i am not close with these people; they will always be my closest, i feel. but it is hard, hard to be instantly made as 'at ease' at our history should have us be. even with friends, non-relatives, sometimes it takes some time for gears to mesh melodiously again....a smoothness of being is a thing to be cherished, when it can be found in the company of others. i know that i can be completely at ease with my family; that they know me best of all, in many ways perhaps better than i know myself, though probably in ways which i could never grasp in the first place by faculty of some ego-bias intrinsic to being an encapsulated mind. relaxation, however, mindfulness and being completely at ease, is something that people spend their entire lives trying to swim upstream of.

one thing i know now about relationships now, is how pivotal it is to establish comfort in a solitary setting. and of course by relationship-solitary, which seem contradictory, of course i mean tete-a-tete; the one-on-one equilibrium which two people can find with each other when they are alone together. in general, the social bullshit stops, and people start being real and engaging with one another about meaningful things. i suppose my concern about family nowadays is that this balance is shifting into a group dynamic...which, hear me out, is no bad thing...after all, a group is what a family is, at it's utmost core. no, i rather mean that, considering that family time is so scarce, we are likely to spend the bulk of it in an amorphous blob of good feeling, complete saturation of senses with the bliss of being around my favorite people, all together again, and trying to relish it (knowing that it will not last). i fear that i won't get my solitary, singular one-on-one time with my family members...that time which i have come to feel is crucial to maintaining a real, crisp, honest relationship with someone. those walls that might be cracked or shattered by such contact will not have the time to be worn down....this is my fear...i will not be able to express to the fullest of my being, because i will be entirely in a social setting where emotions and phrases and looks and jokes are addressed to the crowd (albeit a *very* good and close crowd), not to an intimacy which my heart speaks more to now than ever, considering how little time i have to make it count.

i fear that the more and more i accept the distance which circumstance forces upon my relationships with these people, the more and more i will regret it, because life transitions and who can know where or what or when? i could move to a different country for two years, just like my brother, and not be able to see any of them for a serious brick of time. it would be a voluminous experience, to be sure....not to be missed, i am certain of that. but i cannot help but wonder at the trade-offs one makes with any decision. perhaps the philosopher in me. i feel distant enough even just living where i live, on the west coast, unable to connect with my family but a few scarce times per year, at best.

take a step back from this: how thankful that holidays exist; that they have the magnetism, the force of family to be able to draw these kindred souls back to one another again! bliss, pure. and this is the reason that i could not possibly mind spending exorbitant amounts of money on my family; they are rocks in my life more precious to me than any that i could buy in a store, regardless of any gemstone claims of infinites and forevers. i feel ridiculous, at the same time, buying them gifts, because they do not need them; they feel the same way, but the cycle goes on. i wish to express my caring, and it expresses itself thusly, in the traditional ways that we all grew up with.

presents have come to mean so much more to me, to us, i imagine. i could pull a j.j. abrams, and give my family ambiguous boxes wrapped to the nines, telling them never to open them but to leave them as symbols of what could be, and what is....never knowing, always knowing; forever finding out more about what the concept means. they are foremost mementos and remembrances. take a piece of me with you to your varied lives, and express it how you will. perhaps i will do just that. but these symbols aren't necessary; in fact they have never been less necessary. we observe the tradition, we curtsy, a-courteously, to the court which we owe allegiances to. this is our kingdom, and we may be as foolish as we choose; everything is rainbow-edged and glows with something not to be found anywhere else. our currencies are superior to the federal reserve's; socialism at it's best, most flawless ideal. depression cannot come around here no more.