My Wobbly Bicycle, 162

I remember series-wired Christmas bulbs, waiting in my youthful despair as my father crawled around on his knees, testing one after the other to find the bad one so the string would come back on. I remember bubble lights (same story), and large round pink lights (my grandmother’s idea of being contemporary), and then strands of tiny lights. Our current tree came pre-wired with hundreds of tiny white lights. Actually, we have three trees in our condo: the big one, a tiny one made of sticks, and a medium size one, a cone that I put baby lights on. Everything is so sparkly. And so dark outside. I write this early on Christmas Eve morning. It’s snowing. Of course in the darkest part of the year, humans thought of lights. Christian or not, the natural metaphor is that a light in the darkness represents hope. Alas, there is so much that’s dark besides the skies! Last night I was reading an essay by Jonathan Franzen that I had to put down and change books. Considering my tendency to be depressed at Christmas, I wasn’t going to go to sleep with that much despair filtering though my system. He was cataloging birds, describing the loss of our birds, of our planet, basically. What sort of hope shall I have? That something apocalyptic will turn things around? It’s too late for humans to restore the planet without divine intervention.  All we can do, at best, is to slow the destruction. (And I am deeply grateful for those who are giving their lives to this effort.) I could rage with anger at the blindness that’s led to this mess, but mostly I’m in mourning for our grandchildren. But it’s Christmas Eve! Let us bring back the light, let us rejoice in the rotation that returns light to the planet! Let us learn from African Americans who sang the most glorious gospel songs in the middle of their torment. I think the most human thing we can do is sing—or dance, or play music, or write poems, or do any sort of art—in the dead center of our grief. Consider the musician who played the violin as the Titanic sank into the waves. Will we erect enough solar panels, windmills? Will we stop the mining of coal? Will we be able to continue along the path of the Enlightenment, or will we sink into a dark age of superstition and fake news? One of the wisest people I’ve known said to me once, when I was in despair, “Fleda, nothing lasts forever, does it? The earth itself will burn up eventually.” Does that sound unfairly gloomy, to recall at Christmas? I’m sorry. Actually, I was just at this moment feeling pretty cheery. I was thinking of how amazing humans are, with our sparkly consciousness. I don’t know how long we’ll last on this planet, but then, I don’t know if anyone will read a thing I’ve written after I’m gone. That doesn’t stop me from writing. It’s the unnecessary quality of art that matters. Is that a contradiction? it flies out of us like angels. It is the spirit of us, made visible, made tangible, made audible. Aliveness is made of the transitory. It IS the transitory. They are one in the same, no separation. So, with that in mind, I have to say I’m actually feeling really happy right now. Merry Christmas, or Merry whatever name you like to fasten to the return of light!