December has been written about a lot:
“A Winter’s day, in a cold and dark December” wrote Paul Simon.
The dark almost seems to descend upon you like a curtain being summarily dropped on a bad play. One in which the actors were terrible, and the writing was horrid. One which you never want to see turned into a movie.
This December’s script is one which seems to come from a movie. It seems to have come from some apocalyptic movie written by a Stephen King or a Margaret Atwood. A horror movie turned into a real life situation. A mini “Captain Tripps” which is much, much worse than it had to be. It’s much, much worse than it should have been. It’s an unbelievable event that should have been believed. It’s a tornado which the leaders called a gentle wind. It’s a nasty, dark gray storm cloud, that they said would just “blow over” It was a real boogey man, that they said would just disappear one day. Instead, it crawled up under our bed, and it’s just waiting there for us to put one foot down so it can grab us. It’s the stuff of your childhood nightmares that became a real life tragedy. You know. We all know.
This December is cold and dark already. The sun’s gone down and my feet are already cold. The trees in the woods out back are just a shadow in the distance. I stepped outside and could hear the coyotes howling in the distance….not distant enough though. They are pretty close by. Thank God they aren’t wolves. When the wolves start moving in, I’ll know for sure I’m living in some writer’s worst nightmare. “Don’t go out your back door, the wolves are near by.” Damn, they may be!
“I spent a long time thinking, about the ones the wolves pulled down” (Garth Brooks….by Stephanie Davis)
I look down that long and angry, angry winding and curvy, dusty and dirty, gritty road. I can smell that putrid dust that fills the air and I know that I’m walking now. My car wore out, and my tennis shoes fell off of my feet after the first thousand miles, and there are blisters on my toes from the hot, red clay dirt…unpaved since the day this all started.
I know my writing is as disjointed as my brain this day. My brain is as disjointed as my jangling limbs. It’s December, and when I was a kid, the only thing that made December a bearable month, was the joy it represented and which we celebrated. It made the days bearable. It made the dark nights seem shorter. It made the dawn brighter, and the day sky bluer. It made me less crazy. Now, I think I am just crazy. Tired and crazy. Anxious and crazy. Ignorant and crazy. Unbelieving and crazy.
I feel like we are all walking in the deepest dark, and I hope Isiah was right when he said “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness a light will shine”
I know who he was speaking of, and I can pray that it will pertain to us, even now…even in these times.
Writing for Sanity's Sake 