Two thumbs up for this piece. Nice.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...>
wrote:
>
>
>
> So you take your fresh ground coffee (preferably dark roast Sumatran) and you
> brew it however you do, (I use one of those Bailetti Italian numbers you see
> on the stove in every Sofia Loren movie) and then the magic begins. Having
> tasted versions of "Christmas" blends through the years, I always thought I
> could do better, but until this morning never took the trouble. I resisted
> the temptation to drop in a soft peppermint (tomorrow I'm gunna) and went
> right for the high grade dark coco powder, a sprinkle of cinnamon, sugar, and
> some ginger and milk. Christmas blend perfection. I'm sure any version that
> includes cloves would be great too. But it is the overly strong cloves that
> I object to in the commercial mixes, aside from the fact that any pre-ground
> coffee is a non starter in my kitchen. (Coffee oils are where God lives, and
> God evaporates really quickly.)
>
> Speaking of God in his various human imagined personas, I am sipping my
> yuletide brew while gazing on a nativity baby as pump as the churro stuffed
> Honduran neighbor's kids who stomp up and down the stairs in their princess
> dresses, but sound more like the prince's horse. (Type 2 diabetes coming
> right up.) It is the nativity set from my youth rescued from my Dad's house's
> attic as we emptied it out. It has a tiny wind-up music box that tinkles out
> Silent Night, but slowed down by decades of mouse droppings no doubt. It
> plays the song absentmindedly now in stops and starts, like an old man
> slumped over the piano in the Alzheimers unit who can only manage a few notes
> of the melody at a time before his mental ship sails away for a few moments.
>
> The song is doubly sentimental for me because as a ploy to get some Maharishi
> darshon when he visited MIU my first Winter in '75, I put together a group to
> sing him the song in German. (It is surprisingly not at all Nazi sounding
> and is beautiful in that language, check it out:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUb8ySdERKs ) It actually worked to flush
> out the old guru, and it was the longest time I had spent standing next to
> him at that time. He kept us waiting for hours till the early morning, but
> he was really gracious about it all, despite the fact that he despised
> Christianity and looked so tired I thought he was going to fall over. After
> we were done he asked for Age of Enlightenment songs. Emily Levin banged out
> one of her saccharine ditties. Before he went back upstairs where he was
> saving the world and all (banging groupies) he took a moment to look me in
> the eye. It was a nice steady benevolent look, not exactly kind, a bit
> curious, non committal but prolonged. For a guy as besotted as I was for the
> dhotied one at the time, (or my imagination of him) it was my Christmas
> miracle. I thanked him, and he floated off in a shower of Jai Guru Devs.
>
> Back to my nativity. The figures are some kind of plaster and my Dad
> repainted them in garish Homer Simpson style, no doubt accompanied by more
> than a bit of Dewar's Scotch, so that the wise men look like members of
> George Clinton's Parliament- Funkadelic. There are oxen and sheep and an
> adoring Mary, looking herself a bit sheepish, as Joseph beside her pretends
> to believe her whopper of a tale of her divine pregnancy in a desperate bid
> to keep his first century Courtney Stodden age-inappropriate hot wife with
> him. "This better be the ONLY divinely conceived baby in this house Miss
> Missy!"
>
> My eyes drift up to my walls with pictures of Santas from 1930's magazines
> gaily puffing on cigarettes (damn I wish I was English and could say he was
> sucking on a fag) while the copy makes claims of the throat soothing virtues
> of Chesterfields. Throat soothing! I've got versions of them all over
> thanks to Ebay, as if Santa had a walk-on part on Mad Men.
>
> I've got some hand carved camels made of olive wood led by a man on a donkey
> who I can only assume is spending another Christmas in Guantanamo and someone
> else is now leading these camels laden with the concentrated sap of the poppy
> which I guess is the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, translation for "frankincense
> and myrrh"
>
> I loves me some Christmas. It is an atheist version, but I don't let the
> bastard child of a rapist ghost interfere with my nostalgia wallowing. If
> you really listen to Christmas songs they are freak'n maudlin aren't they?
> That hits my blues center just fine. I'm not even a hater of the
> materialistic/commercial side of Christmas. I like being coerced into buying
> presents with money I don't have, because otherwise I wouldn't do it, and
> gift giving is a blast. (If you prime the pump with specific requests, the
> receiving isn't so bad either.)
>
> The invention of the modern Christmas and many of its most iconic symbols and
> traditions was pretty recently laid herky jerky on top of those wonderful
> pagan contributions. (Let's get plastered and bring a tree into the hut!)
> If some people want to believe that the arrival of one fat baby will give
> their lives meaning, who really cares? (Oh yeah, I do when they put crèches
> on the public courthouse lawn...)
>
> So to all my friends at FFL, I hope you play this version of All I Need for
> Christmas is You (NOT the sappy Mariah Carey puke version, but the cool Vince
> Vance and the Valiants version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1VkMBi9vvw
>
> Brew yourself a steaming cup of your own version of Christmas coffee, (I'm
> pretty sure Santa would pour some brandy, bourbon or scotch in his) and
> contemplate that even though the baby Jesus story is just a human contrivance
> meant to cover up the indiscretions of an overly hot young Mid Eastern woman
> married by the barbaric customs of her day to an old coot with shriveled
> olives, take heart. By the time the first crocuses are poking their noses out
> of the snow, he will be executed for being the world's first Occupy Jerusalem
> hippie. Wait, that wasn't the landing I was trying to stick
>
> Share that enhanced coffee with someone you love, turn the song up, and who
> knows, you might get as lucky as the Holy Spirit). Love is my version of
> Bethlehem's shining star that makes me get on my camel and ride into that
> beautiful silent night.
>
