On December Desires

 

While November is the ghost month, December directs our desires: not mourning the old, but embracing the new. Increasingly, the newer and newest of the new. It’s clearly to be seen from the general December environment: secular, retailistic, benevolent (hopefully), expectant (optimistically), crowded, noisy, exhausting. Seeking desires is wearying, because desire is endless.

If I crawl out from under the pile of December demands and expectations, I seem to be still the same person, self-absorbed, flawed, repeating constantly the same mistakes and misperceptions.

The ability to desire is more than instinct. My dog wants a bone; my cat wants a mouse. Humanity, however, is able to imagine more abstract desires put into practice: peace on earth, good will towards men. (There’s no good will towards mice in the cat world.) Yet we continue with these endless mistakes and misperceptions.

Desires for land, resources, prominence, authority, domination, salvation (of others), haven’t changed since Roman times.

I mention Rome because in the days of Caesar Augustus a census was taken, which included the least of subjects, a little child, to be known as the Desire of all Nations, (to those who could see). From all blindness of heart, Good Lord, deliver us.

On November Nocturnes

Have you ever met, in lucid dreams, someone from the distant past, looking as old as you are now, surrounded in light? Did you apologise for what you did? Did the light fracture? What called this visitation? Did you know you could not have done otherwise? November is the ghost month.

 All Souls Day. One place these souls now inhabit is memory. Since ghosts are travelling with us, it’s ungracious to deny them a blessing. How exhausting to be a ghost! Ghosts of those who detracted and hurt me; ghosts of unfriends. This could be the month of ghosts resting.  Rest in peace.

The past is a mountain, and we are mountain climbers.

You are owed nothing after raising this ghost and so troubling others, a kind of incantation. You are more than the wrongs you have caused. The past will settle by itself; consequences fall out by chance or design. You are worth many sparrows.

You are now forgiven for being a witness, a victim, or collateral damage. Forgiveness means - when vengeance seems proper – you write off the debt. The Lord, for example, is plenteous in mercy. So you may forgive your ghosts, (dead by definition), or not.