Ugh. The onslaught of Xmas memories is painful.

I write not to be a downer; but there's no blinking the fact that the old, boyish emotionality does all come rushing back upon one, on Xmas Eve. OH SPIRITS OF HAPPIER TIMES! OLD FACES, OLD FRIENDS, OLD SONGS! In times of emotional extremity -- the old HALT = HUNGRY, ANGRY LONELY or TIRED discouse -- one is apt to feel the urge to act out, and it is good to address that directly. My usual ritual for dragging myself through the Christmas emotional excesses, is to re-read Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Every year I rejoice to see the stoic determination of my great hero, Ebenezer Scrooge; I approve his sound policies; I do not understand why they are not generally adopted; I feel a deep need for a greater representation of Scrooge's positions in contemporary american debates about the border and the deficit; I earnestly hope that THIS YEAR, THIS YEAR THIS YEAR . . . Scrooge will be able to hold out against the sentimental importuning of the ghosts. . . . . Somehow this year . . . the taking-seriously of my own Christian vocation -- Poverty, Chastity, and Laboring Mightily in my vocation - - have led me to an isolation from the rest of humanity that is profound and almost complete. EVERY DAY, for a person who has chosen to lead a monkish life, is a matter of choosing to deliberately place my hand in the candle-flame of boy-lust . . . and leave it there until the flesh chars, and the abused nerves no longer sound the alarm bells of pain, because they've been burnt off entirely. But Christmas Eve, yes, I am more than usually conscious that I am nothing more than a set of nerve-endings, all crying out in pain, at the lack of a boy. In theory, the Christian myth offers me a boy. In practise, I'm supposed to content myself with arid theological reflections on KENOSIS and INCARNATION, and donate pajamas to the child-oriented charities the church deems appropriate, and count myself grateful that I'm allowed to do even that. In reality . . . I'm listening to kaleidescopic remix of 1980's hits, which are operating to remind me of when I was young and energetic and smart, and thought that life held great things for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxJ6uMTje80 Now, I know that I can only function by allowing the traditional monastic disciplines to drive a wedge between myself and my emotions. ---------------------------------- Well, things are not entirely gloomy. I paid $80 for a cutting of Disocactus. 'Vista Hermosa' (thought to be a humming-bird cross of D. biformis x D. quetzaltecus) from Jay Vanini (heloderma5 on ebay.) When it arrived, I cut the piece in four smaller pieces and all are rooting lustily in moist sand. Basically a small-flowered epiphyllum, recently discovered in the jugles of Central America. https://www.exoticaesoterica.com/magazine/rare-and-colorful-epiphytic-cacti I have some skill with growing & grafting the spiny beasts; "Irish Lollipops" (green globular cactus grafted on green rootstock stems) and 19th C. style weeping standards are a piece of cake for me to do, and I think D. 'Vista Hermosa' would do extremely well as a weeping standard. It could be readily sold, you see, to the kind of San Diego gardening ladies who like fuchsias. I have about 100 sturdy rootstock of Pereskiopsis spathulata going strong, ready for Spring grafting. Have already got some choice rhipsalis species lines up and grafted. See what this amazing plant will do, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcPvDANhtUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_uOOYAq70U The joke here is that Lophophora williamsii anagrams into "WHOA, I AM IRISH LOLLIPOP!" Because . . . it's green, and it's a ball on a stick . . . gettit? Merry Christmas all! Things can only get better, now that the new sun is installed and warming up! ---Sb