Maybe tomorrow

It's a dismal Christmas I'm seeing in this year by myself. Funny but today, of all days of the year, I feel truly alone. All that frenzied running around,  'doing Christmas' with various people, all for nothing.

Doesn't change the fact that I'm truly alone.

Doesn't change the fact that I choose to be here by myself rather than in a house full of people.

I put Arnold in my lap and stroked him for a while but he seemed uneasy and eventually he pulled away.

I have only enough energy to scan the acres of nothingness that is my life. The life I chose. The life characterised by negation.

Maybe tomorrow. Things will be different. In spite of it all.

Death, and the variants thereof

Mark texted to tell me that his uncle Eddie just died. He didn't say how. He just told me he was due to get on stage in about a half second. Eddie was young. I'd met him before. Lived in Perth. And he wanted so much to come home. Over there he worked and slept. Not much of a life outside the two.

And he was so lonely. He accumulated his leave for the year and came back to Malaysia. He would follow Mark around the musician's circuit. Or they would go fishing.

Mark sounded sad and in shock. But when with the help of my sometimes not so  trusty GPS I found this place there he was, playing with Alvin, as nonchalant as a Christmas decoration. About the only  indication I had that something was out of the ordinary was a song he chose to sing to end the first set: Swing low sweet chariot...looking to carry me home.

      

And just like that another person extinguished, falling into that deep abyss from whence no stories emerge.

This year has been full death and I just can't seem to find the people who fell in. I'm sure there must be some pattern in all this randomness. I just don't know what it is.

And I'm so tired.

Please,  there's only a few more days in the year.

Please,  no more.

The trick is to meander

I've finished the cover story. Of course, it's not finished, not really. It's just that I've tied up the first draft with a bow, and sent it on to Anna. To read, perchance to scream...ay, there's the rub. For in that scream of death, what nightmares may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal, cornbread, ah, there's the respect, that makes the tragedy of an overly long story that probably needs to be longer. No matter. Can always add. And I'm supposed to call this Datuk guy tomorrow to step up and spew quotes.

I've taken to buying stuff. I'm Christmas shopping at the moment (bought lotsa stuff today) and I still haven't even covered everyone I'm supposed to be buying for. Ah me, there's the rub. I bought another ring for me though. So now I have one red, one blue, one green and one silver. Yummers. I love my silver ring. I am constantly stopping to admire and adjust it on my small small fingers.

I thought this weekend I would concentrate on the dogs. They needed to be bathed (ugh ticks galore. Me not being around has been bad for the mutts). Their beds needed to be bathed as well (the ticks got onto the beds and the dogs were heartily avoiding them). Elliot has developed various wounds all over his body from excessive scratching and biting. I keep dabbing antibiotic cream on said wounds. Poor boy. Every time I think I got them all, he's opened up a new one and they bloom on his skin like a lot of pink roses.

So, anyway. I don't know where I will spend Christmas. Probably alone and after I will take a drive down to JB to be in time for Chubs's tea ceremony. Maybe I will find something congenial to occupy me. Maybe I won't. I still haven't moseyed on upstairs to get my leave form and apply for leave. Which I need to do, pretty soon.

What I've learned about holidays is don't have any obligatory to-do list and don't sign your money off somewhere to something that obliges you to go there every day. Instead, meander through the holiday, read your books and meander. That's good advice, no?

I came back with a cold but I think it's all done now.

I may go to Backyard tonight. But then again, I might not.

Later for you.