Christmas Eve in Prescott!

Prescott. Arizona's own little Ashland Oregon. But instead of the Shakespeare festival there's Whiskey Row, a street jam packed with pubs that, I've heard, the cowboys visit on their days off. We made ourselves at home in the art district in a tiny info shop that smelled and looked exactly like the Campbell Club and was inhabited by 5 of the nicest humans and 4 of the best dogs anyone could ask for on Christmas eve.



Here is a sample of our lovely song making!

Between mouthfuls of spicy coconut soup and inexpensive wine we played some songs to our tiny audience. All snuggled together with space heaters, do-it-yourself handbooks, fairy dust (that landed in the wine!), accordians, and guitars it was the coziest christmas eve a person could ask for.



After playing our set the whole group decided to make music together. We started making up songs at about 9:30 and kept it up for five hours. There were cake fights in the kitchen, experiments in playing the saw, rounds of coffee made with dumpstered goat milk by a wonderful person named Nobody, and endless improvised lyrics to endless improvised songs. It was joyful joyful joyful, and at the end of the night Todd unfolded the couch that was so full of pennies, dust, and other unknown things that we all shouted with amazement.



Then Todd made a very nice clean sheet appear out of nowhere and the three of us slept like snuggle bugs all in row in our cocoon sleeping bags.



Having had coffee right before bed I got up once to walk outside and see Prescott at night. The stars were exceptionally bright and closer than usual. Then, I snuck back to my place between Bethany and Stef and went to sleep.

Todayism

Everything is Happening. And it's funny. The boy barked our warning and we stopped still, by the skate park. Holding hands, waiting for another signal. A dog barked at the boy, the boy barked, we started walking again, holding hands, as if we had been walking all the while.

I started a fire in the fireplace. I burned a lot of advertisements (in a variety of neon colored flames) before the wood caught fire. The wood caught fire! I thought about digging a fire pit with a stick in a hard flat clearing while it was raining. I thought about blowing on those precious bits of kindling and how the fire pit was not deep enough to stop the wind.



Everything is funny. My leg spasms when things are so funny that they are sad. Or so sad that they are funny. Or so sad/funny that they are beautiful. Everything is beautiful and easy.

The fire now, in it's very burned down state, reminds me of Christmas. That, and the colored lights. Both, together. I feel like it is Christmas eve. I am excited because I like laying next to the tree and smelling it. I also like to practice balancing while watching the fire. I have not practiced balancing since Christmas when I was eight. I used to balance for long periods of time in the living room, standing on small platforms with wheels (not limited to skate boards). I would pursue balance.

Today I am pursing health. I am stalking it. I am taking it to sleep with me, and drinking little bits of it, and putting my head over a hot bowl of it and breathing it in. I am taking brisk bike rides with it, I am putting it in the dishwater and rubbing it into my skin. I am considering constructing a small platform and labeling it "health." After I make it I will spend hours balancing on it in front of the fire.

There are so many things I could spend hours doing!




Why does Jesus holds up two fingers in the paintings? Because he is pushing a little blessing at you, bopping it along. His fingers are the paddle, the blessing is the Foosball.

I laughed so much when the blessing bopped Stef. She got three Yahtzee's in a row and couldn't stop shaking with joy. My stomach ached in horrible spasms of empathy. I was afraid I would stop breathing, or that Stef would keep on shaking, and then so would I. We would shake and shake and the fire would forget it was a fire. I would forget to balance, the blessings would wander off course, two dogs would be barking and we wouldn't know which one was meant to stop us or make us go.

The Input at the Airport

My corner of the airport.

My small red table and little green chair. 

Me watching CNN.

CNN is commenting on Obama's celebrity while zooming in on a picture of his perfectly sculpted abs.  Their hypothesis: Obama is a celebrity because he's hot.  My hypothesis: CNN is turning into Entertainment Tonight.

I am sitting at a toadstool height table with my most worldly possessions: my guitar and my  computer. I also have cowboy boots. Very worldly.  I am in Phoenix Arizona.  My flight is continually being pushed back and I am entertaining very entertaining dreams of small campfires built entirely of napkins, stolen magazines, toilet paper, and newspapers critiquing Obama's abs.  (VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: CNN is now talking about the wardrobe of their reporter who is wearing silly shorts).  I imagine that around my fire of airport kindling will gather the other stranded travelers lost in Phoenix on this the eve of Christmas eve.  I will whip my guitar out of its casings and begin to sing carols to the my new wayfaring friends.  Ah how romantic to be stranded in the airport.  

I am intrigued. I have never really been stranded before.  They haven't actually canceled my flight yet, but I may be strung along with promises of 11pm and 1am until it is actually morning and I find that I have spent all the night in Arizona.  Something truly amazing has begun to happen.  I am being surrounded by adorable children.  A small girl has plopped herself down with a ziplock bag full of crayons and a Mary Poppins-like bag of tricks.  Her sister has joined her and has been trying to read what I'm writing.  I keep trying to hide it from her, since I am writing about her.  In addition a very small orange headed baby keeps crawling over and making a grab for each of my few (and very worldly) possessions.  I like to imagine that these children are gathering around me because I am exuding wonderful art teacher joy but I also suspect that I am sitting at the kid's table.  Maybe they are exuding something that I want to be around.  

CNN is finally starting to report real news and unfortunately it looks like airports everywhere are experiencing the same kind of delays as my airport, right here.  Oh, and Portland Oregon can look forward to ten more inches of snow!  Even if my dreams of campfires fall through in Phoenix I may end up stranded in the snowy streets of Portland for Christmas, a raggedy waif adrift in the elements.  I am having a good time dramatizing my circumstances.  I've been reading Henry James and so far everything is really dramatic and dire, but I can't actually tell what is happening.  

I am now having a nice chat with the girl who has the never-ending bag.  She's asked me if I like flying, and has informed me that she likes getting off of the plane.  She is currently unpacking everything anyone could ever need to make a scrap book.  Her sister is jumping around like a monkey.  It's weird, I like kids more the more I work with them.  I think they are teaching me how to play again.  Yesterday I spent a half an hour as a zombie queen.  My scroungey little zombie helper clung tick-like to my neck as I chased the smaller children around the room saying things like "BRAASRISLIFN!!!" and "I'm going to eat you!" I instructed my tick to bite Bryan (my fellow teacher) but we never caught him.  I really enjoy being a teacher. 

"CNN Christmas eve.  Barack Obama will be REVEALED" Yeah whatever CNN. You're just going to show me his hot body again.  ("I can't wait for the airplane to yand!" -little sister).  Oh, wow, they are actually reporting real news, but their interspersing it with the topless photo.  

My small companion is really organized and awesome. "Yeah. I brought a lot of stuff to do because you can't just come to the airport and get on a plane, you know?" Well, I didn't know actually.  I am finding this out for the first time.  This girl seems really sweet, but now she is making fun of me because I don't watch TV. "You don't have cable? You don't have nuthin'?" she corrects herself a second later "nothing." Now she murmurs "Friends don't let friends watch cable." I laugh because she's contradicting herself, she says, "that's from a commercial!"

This is hilarious. 

I will write more later if I find myself huddled around a small illegal fire.  But for now, this is Christy, signing out.