Annual Christmas Post

We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of THE SUN:

DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.

Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

Papa says, "If you see it in THE SUN, it's so."

Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O'HANLON.

115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

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VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, VIRGINIA, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank GOD! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, VIRGINIA, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

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I'm not quite sure what I can add this year. I have never stopped believing that Santa Claus is real. In the past I've talked a little bit about belief, or about faith, or stuff like that. In light of everything this year, I really don't know that I can discuss belief or faith with any degree of legitimacy.

Well. I suppose I actually can. Despite everything this year, I still believe in Santa. I still believe in love, and in fancy, and in poetry, and in romance, and in faith. I still cling to hope, and I believe in love, and that's faith enough for me.

... I think I just quoted Rush in my Christmas blog. o.o That is awesome. And a sign of how tired I am.

At any rate. Christmastime is a time to remember the good things about the previous year, and anticipate the better things of the year to come. It's like New Year's, but with more love and joy and family and less alcohol. Hopefully.

Being nineteen this year, and having been a legal adult for more than twelve months now, I think I can pretty safely exhort you all - whoever reads my mindless drivel - to NEVER LET GO of that childlike wonder. Don't let it go, don't lose it, no matter WHAT. That is what keeps us human, that is what keeps us going when things suck so badly that we want to give up because what's the point, it's never going to get better after this... that innocent joy in the simple things - Santa. Snow. Eggnog. The magic that is the Internet. Seeing people you've not seen in years, people who mean the world to you - THAT is what defines who we are and what our lives are. Don't let that go, whatever else you do, stay innocent. Don't give in to the skepticism of a skeptical age.

"He lives, and he lives forever." Santa is the age-old embodiment of that childlike wonder we all need so much. Besides, if you believe in nothing, what point is there in living? Consider a modified Pascal's Wager. If you don't believe in Santa Claus, and he turns out to be real...... how much joy and surprise and love have you missed in your life, just because you had to see to believe?

One of my favorite holiday movies is Miracle on 34th Street. The old, old one, the original movie. No one ever conclusively proved anything; Kris could've been Santa, he could've been a nice old man with a beard. The fact remains that Doris and Susan believed, and so for them, he WAS Santa. That is all that mattered. Perception shapes reality. If you believe in goodness and right, then that is what you will see. If you believe everyone hates you, that is how the world will seem to you. It's as simple as that.

(No it's not, nothing ever is, but if you believe, then that's more LIKELY how you'll perceive it.)

Yes, I am spinning out writing this so I can post it on Christmas Day proper instead of in the last moments of Christmas Eve.

I really don't know how to wrap this up, except... "Fill your hearts with the Christmas cheer, 'cos Santa Claus comes tonight." :)

I will talk to you all tomorrow morning - a more sane hour of tomorrow morning - "'cos tonight's the night the world begins again."

I hope you've all been good this year! I haven't been perfect. I know this. But I have been true to myself, and I believe that is what matters.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. <3

Torturing Food

I am a kitchen NINJA. Having spent the morning craving something unknown, I ventured into my head and attempted to discern what it was I was craving. The answer: COOKIE DOUGH. However, cookie dough takes approximately twenty minutes to make, and then you have to actually bake cookies. I don't have time for that at present, as I have someplace I have to be in less than an hour.

My solution? Make a much smaller, improvised cookie dough, maybe a quarter the usual size. But then how to cook it?

FRY IT.

GRACE'S FRIED COOKIE DOUGH

1/4 c sugar

1/4 c brown sugar

-mix, then add

1/4 c butter, melted

1 egg

- mix, then add

vanilla extract, to taste

pinch of salt

- mix, then add

3/4 c flour (a little bit at a time)

- put a frypan on medium heat. Melt butter over heat. Add cookie dough; fry till done.

I have yet to finish the last step - we'll see how it turns out!

Chase the frothy bubbles

And it's been forever since I've posted. Yet again. Sigh.

When last I wrote, I was desperately clinging to the edifice of a not-as-decadent-as-it-felt-at-the-time past, which was causing some of the upset in my mental stability. Since then I have moved on and opened my eyes - dear god did I ever open my eyes.

To briefly recap:

My ex-loser (nothing personal, Consumptive, but you turned out to be a loser) broke up with me at the beginning of March but then took me back, and later tried to claim that it'd been over since then anyway. He finally stopped drawing it out at the end of Spring Break after not speaking to me for a week - ended it by changing his relationship status on Facebook, which whenever I say it sounds really stupid and immature that it should matter. But whatever.

The following weekend one of my longtime close friends was acting.. different. He usually was quiet, but not *that* quiet, and for serious I am NOT "too cute" to attack. I was a KENDER. >.< We were playing Dungeons and Dragons and I was a kender and one of our party members had a thing against kender.. but D was a pixie and he kept antagonizing DB who hated kender.. so DB was targeting D more than me, and then M decided that it was because I was "too cute," which I protested, and D and I were keeping a running text commentary, and he said that M was right, and I said ?? and he said I *was* too cute and I said ?????.

Then both of my parents said Um, D totally likes you - to which I said No way, 'cos D and I were together for a while a long time ago, and I was a complete b***h to him for a really long time, and it's only been in about the last year that I stopped being a b***h and we became friends again.. but so I asked K if she'd noticed anything, and then on Tuesday D told me that yes, he DID like me again, and I was upset because I did NOT want to lose my best guy friend AGAIN, and he understood and didn't ask for an answer (since technically he didn't ASK anything), and that afternoon my sister and I came home and our house had been broken into, and D was the first person to respond (after my grandparents and my dad and the cops) and he came over on his break from work and just held me.. but I was still being an idiot and I was still hung up on the Consumptive, who didn't respond to my hysterical text for about three hours. So that was Tuesday. By Sunday I'd stopped texting the Consumptive, and D and I were talking almost constantly, and then he asked me out on Monday. The 18th. Which is today. But two months ago. <3

I have not cried because of him; before the FIRST month with the Consumptive was up, I'd probably cried a half-dozen times on his account.. D has been nothing but gentle, sweet, solicitious, kind, warm, understanding.. I swear this boy - man - knows me better than I know myself. This relationship is the most stable relationship I've ever had with anyone EVER, friend or boyfriend or anything, and it's so nice to have him back in my life.

-x-

I graduated high school just over a week ago; I still am in a bit of shock. I didn't break down crying until my dad hugged me, and then - oop. There I go again. Urgh. I got hired yesterday - a corporation called NorPac, which is a division of Vector Marketing? which is in turn a child company of Cutco.. which manufactures cutlery. Like kitchen knives. But kitchen knives like WHOA. The interviewer demonstrated with a pair of their kitchen shears and cut. a. penny. OMG. I swear it's true; the penny got passed around. It was INSANE.

-x-

I've spent the last four days sitting for my aunt and uncle.. their two elder boys needed a chauffeur for the week and OH HEY I've had my license for more than two years now.. so yay. The boys' parents come back.. hopefully in about half an hour. I want to sleep at home tonight.

I start training for the job with NorPac this coming Thursday.

I still can't figure out how to load Office or any sort of decent word processor on my laptop (shiny new toy I got for graduation yay <3 ). Which is insanely frustrating.

So it's down to about ten minutes till they're s'posed to get home.. I'mma post and log off for now. *really insanely tired* I'm determined to sleep at my house in my own bed tonight.. I *will* make this happen. D:<

'Till next time, then, I suppose! :)

In a minute there is time

Well. It's been a long while since I've posted anything. And I hate beginning blogs with that, but oh well. T. S. Eliot has been on my mind quite a bit of late; that I've chosen to study his Waste Land for my AP Lit final project might have something to do with this. Also we read two of his other poems in class. I've felt rather Prufrockian recently... I didn't know it was a word until we read the poem and Simonson told us.

I've felt uninspired. I can't write at present. At least not fiction. I had been working on a new incarnation of the same old Starlight plotline and characters, but around mid-January, Venitus decided to stop answering my increasingly-frantic calls... He still is, blast him... and I can't write poetry - I've never been able to write good poetry, except that one. Everything keeps coming out like really bad teenage girl emo poetry, like the kind of stuff I would've written in junior high. And I should've moved beyond that as a writer, no matter how not-good I am. It's mildly frustrating.

Spring is coming late this year... and April always brings me back to Eliot anyway; it is indeed "the cruellest month..."

I've been getting headaches fairly frequently. This past weekend I decided to try not wearing a headband, and instead pinned my hair back for the first time since I had to for synchronized swimming in third grade. It's interesting, I like how it looks and feels, but it's fairly labor-intensive.

My sleep patterns are shot all to blazes. Sunday night I couldn't sleep at all; I think I fell asleep around one in the morning, woke up at about three, fell back asleep, and then woke up a bit after five after dreaming about spiders the size of my two closed fists. I HATE spiders. And then last night I fell asleep at about ten and could not, for the life of me, get up this morning. I'm toying with the idea of deliberate sleep deprivation tonight... probably not worth it, hmm?

Looking back... I am so much further now than I ever thought I would be, this time last year. This time last year I was moody, desperately unhappy (not fanciful language; I was unhappy in the active sense. I can't describe it any other way. There was a constant cold sucking hole just below my solar plexus - it was almost a physical sensation), borderline suicidal, and looking for any help I could possibly get. I tried not to lash out at my friends and family, although I know I did, and when I did I cut off contact with everyone and tried to drown myself in this awful self-loathing. I only know all this because I left evidence of it: posts on Facebook, a journal that I've not used since then, stories I started and abandoned, even a handful of CDs I burned to try to express my mood tangibly somehow.

That being said, I'm not as far as I would've liked to be now, a year after this started. But, I'm willing to accept this milestone and be satisfied with how far I've come, and keep pushing forward.

There have been times when it hasn't seemed like I've made any progress. There are still days when I get that horrible, cold emptiness just above my stomach, and when I wish that there was some way I could justify asking someone to hold me until it passes. But there are also days when I can't explain why I'm smiling, and when I start dancing a little bit while playing badminton in gym class. And, remembering where I was and how far I've come, I will say that it. Is. Worth. It. Those days where I laugh for no reason or start humming while walking to class - those days make every SECOND of the last year worth it. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Yes, this time last year I realized that the Gutterflower album by the Goo Goo Dolls fit my mindset almost scarily well - scarily due to tracks like What A Scene, which I still can't listen to without feeling myself start losing what I've worked for. And I still feel that way, to an extent. There are songs that describe moods I have, better than I could ever hope to do so myself. But it's not just What A Scene or Truth Is A Whisper or What Do You Need? or those songs.

I am no longer that girl. I am who she never thought she could be. Granted, I'm still not who she wanted to be, but I'm closer than she ever thought she'd get.

And that, that hope, is why I laugh.