Every man should have himself a pair of slippers. This is not young man's wisdom but I am happy to borrow it from prior generations, the comfort of having warm feet, the ease of stepping across a mop-hungry floor free from the anxiety-causing crumbs and morsels that stick to the bottom of an unprotected foot, the gentle defiance of gravity. Slippers; durable hugs for the foot. And why not? These peds work hard. They're life's tires.

Nothing quite as satisfying as homemade toast. Huff huff. That's right. Unlike the legions of Wonderbread lever-depressors I'm no ordinary toaster jockey. No, this night I browned up a few slices of homemade bread. Loaves made a week or so ago during a winter spell in which heavy snow traded shifts with tit-tightening air to conspire to keep us Northerners indoors. Yeast-risen breads made mostly out of curiosity but also out of a desire for delicious smells. "Baking is so hard," they always say. This turns out to be true -- there are many ways to screw it up. "You really have to measure just right!" Also true, but I've found measuring to be one of the easier aspects. Like any form of cooking, baking is about decision-making and timing. because of the tactile nature of baking I've discovered it to be an intuitive process. It is equal parts instinct and equal parts "just-fucking-do-it-already!" It's sticky and visceral and it smells like morning in Heaven. Advice: Listen to the dough; it will tell you when it's ready. It won't stick to the work surface or to your hands, but it will be elastic, springy, just slightly short of uncooperative. Proof under a moist towel, grease the pans with your fingers, forgive yourself your sins, use too much spice by a third. That's it. That's life. This night's slices browned just perfectly, warm and ready to accept a pad of cold butter followed by a coat of jar-clicking blackberry jam.

Bread bowls soon. And clam chowder. Chili too.

Moving on...

Oh women, you divine creatures you. So complicated and complex, beautiful and worthy. You puzzles, you roses, you ferns, you insufferable headaches!

Don't buy a grown man a shirt, not unless he points at a shirt on a rack and says to you, "Buy me that shirt. That is a shirt I will wear in public. I will not be embarrassed in that shirt." Are you listening, Santa Claus? Do you hear me? How bout parents and grandparents? You paying attention? (Of course not, only a privileged few know about this blog) Santa could care less, but I know the DNA-mongers that are my relatives do give a couple of arctic shits about their gifts to me. So here goes: Christmas gifts consisting of sweaters and shirts always land squarely both in the I-love-you department but also in the Here-you-go-wear-an-ugly-piece-of-shit department. I unwrapped a nice purple shirt from the dad's favorite hunting store. Collar buttons, dual chest pockets (with buttons (and flaps)) aside, it's a nice shirt, but it looks like something a truck driver would wear to church. And it also looks like an errand, a mission of return upon which I will someday venture in the next 90 days. I will walk away with a flashlight, or some gloves, maybe some tackle. That would be cool.

I live in a building of many doors. There is a gate. Next to the gate is a bank of mailboxes, all neighbors, all strangers. Lucky for them I find a sense of serenity in shoveling snow. So on recent accumulations I've shoveled snow for them a few times lately. After clearing the communal walk it behooves me to also clear the several stairways and doorfronts, all the way up to the kickplate. I've earned a couple satisfying thanks but mostly I've been happy to just see nature beaten back for another cycle. I enjoy the rhythm of shoveling, the silence, the peace, the work of burning calories, just simply so that myself and my roommate and people I don't know can step comfortably on the last few paces home.

*smile*

Smile.

cold fingers, loud palms

Walked to a friend's holiday party tonight. Wore my black wingtips, the ones that click when walked in, but only in quiet rooms. I stepped carefully along the few patches where the recent weeks' ice had not yet been fully melted by the day's ingress of above-freezing air. One of the houses along the way had a tree displayed in the front window, a bushy pine covered entirely in blue christmas lights. On the outside of the building just below the second floor balcony hung a large wreath covered entirely in orange christmas lights. The rest of the house was dark, at rest. It sat serenely among the rest of the homes on the block. It sat without burden.

Friends and new friends gathered to clink the rims of red and green plastic cups. The apartment was right proper. Pictures in the right place, beds and bathrooms free of blemishes and not a single unreplaced light bulb to be accounted for. Cider, then beer. And laughs and smiles, and the usual eyes about strangers. Meeting and being met. Some women, available or maybe not, some definitely not. Thoughts of hope and frustration, want, wanting and being wanted, sin and decency... all hung about the place like moistened spider webs in a cave.

Perilous is the mind of the self-reflective man. Oh to be stupid and unaware. How eagerly do I strive to achieve the bliss such attributes endow. Genuine ignorance is genuine mercy. I strive to be present. I live with one foot in the past and one foot in the future and I am completely lost. I am not me. I have never met myself, nor have I ever been introduced to anyone as a whole person. I am a dog hair stuck in the bristles of time.