you can find a Xmas in RealTime� entry if you want to know what Xmas was like in RealTime�... here in babble, there's been no Xmas... not yet, at least... no entry... I did catch up to today by uploading a few more backlogged entries from the scribble files, but that's all I did as far as babbling today since getting home and writing the RealTime� entry... I choose to share with you something from the scribble files that continues the theme of the last three entries (if you dare find time to start where this began then perhaps you'll know me better and maybe find a good feeling... it is a time of year for good feelings, after all...

it's just the kind of fool I am...

there in RealTime� I am a fool to turn to the obscurity and elusiveness I play in the babbling brook that is behind the candoor... there I am trusting the muses and leaving myself open to every vulnerability, to any insecurity, to every possibility... there I leave any real power at the door and submit to the winds of chance, to the will of the free associative instincts and influences that I do not claim as my own, but express in words as well as I am able... but for the last bit of babble on this Xmas day of 2006, I give you a few moments (actually, a couple of days) when I dared to express just the kind of fool I am, in RealTime� (including, as a second encore, Xmas in RealTime�)...


but here in RealTime� I am not supposed to play... here in RealTime� I am supposed to stop and focus on the real and decide what is true and share the facts of life as I know it, as I live it in the flesh and blood world of real time... and so why should I feel any fear or trepidation in sharing what I do, I mean... what if I experiment or explore some ideas or if I spend my time doing something that is different enough to be suspect or laughed at by the norms of this culture?...

what if I think or do something that might be a waste of time in your mind, or worse, what if I think or do something that you might consider wrong...

and I come to the real...

I write here to share myself with you, not to please you, not to cater to you, not to win you over or earn your respect or seek your judgment...

your opinion does matter to me and I feel powerfully good when I read support or praise or positive words about what I write... that you might accept me as real and worthy of your respect and admiration, that you might believe in me helps me keep hope alive that my dreams really could come true, that there are real people in this world who respect honesty and who believe in sharing as I do...

but if I never read or hear another word, if I never see another sign of feedback, that would not change me...

so why be the fool who hides?... why be the fool who pretends not to feel when feeling is what life is about?... why be the fool who accepts the slow dying that comes from turning off senses and ignoring sensations and repressing emotions and looking past the precious inspirations that are all around us every moment...

and inside...

when I am alone, yes, I dream... I fantasize... I feel my dreams just as if it was the first time I am dreaming them... I do not turn away because time feels so long it becomes a burden... I do not empower time as a burden and fill it with fear and doubt and despair over the perception of failure just because my dream of sharing and loving is not happening in every way it could...

I remember that my dream of sharing and loving is coming true in many ways every moment of every day... in my work, sharing and loving is very real and intensely emotional... and in my aloneness I keep it just as real even if no one shares the intimacy such realness can become...

loneliness?... yes it is real... and yes, I empower it sometimes... but only when I want to use it to create some rhyme, some song expressing an emotion we might share... or when I am a fool and forget I do not have to empower it to despair...

I should remember, keeping it real, that I do not have to do that...

so in this year of 2006 as it approaches 2007 I am alone in the most important moments of life when the intimacy of true love rushes through me and the potential of falling in love becomes real... and as I have done in previous years, I choose to remember times when such love was real and I let the memories inspire the feelings and let the feelings come out in words and if that is odd or laughable or a waste of time for anyone, oh well, change the channel... it is the best I can do in the moment...

so in this moment in RealTime� I am paying tribute to the memories and reliving the emotions and most of all, experiencing the realness of feeling it all again... and that's the best I can do until someone comes along to share RealTime� again...

and so because the kind of fool I am is the kind who resists hiding because hiding leads to pretense and the unreal and the kind of fool I am is the kind who wants to keep it real all the time at least somewhere in the moments that become this life... if you have the time and really want to know, for the past 24 hours or so, the realest RealTime� I can feel has been here...

yay for the fearless exposure of everything inside of me because that is as real as I can be...

and whatever you decide to do, if you make it real too, yay for you J



and so it is Xmas

and this is what I've done in RealTime�... concluding a wondrous day before and Xmas eve out at Disney (a wondrous experience in spite of the reality of rain and the insult and greed of $7 ponchos made of maybe six cents worth of plastic) with a magnificent dinner at a fine music-filled Italian restaurant, I settled into a bit of babbling and singing to myself time until slipping out of the house and sneaking many many presents under the six Xmas trees on the six units of the hospital I call home when I doing what I do to earn money... as they say (and maybe never more accurately), it�s a living...

and once the stockings were hung from the day room handrails with care and the presents all neatly stacked under the trees with special attention to size, shape, and color in order to create the best visual presentation, and with the children all still safely tucked in their beds and the staff prepared for the onslaught of the energy of Xmas morning, I slipped out of the picture to let the Xmas morning wake up happen... that is respect for the staff who worked the night that I offer by slipping out before the kids wake for it would not be fair to those who sit and watch over the kids all night for a faux-Santa to appear and receive all the precious attention and excitement the kids will have at wake up...

I did sneak a peek though, incognito as the everyday clinician I am... the air was buzzing and the eyes were beaming and the hearts were thumping and the rooms were teaming with excited kids ripping and tearing and squealing and comparing and sharing one of the few times of their lives they might forget they have a medical label and have been through very rough times...

and the mystery and magic of Santa remained well preserved in what was left behind, dozens of presents for each of the 85 kids, gifts donated by corporations as big as the Atlanta Braves and as small as the mom and pop convenience store on the corner... and as usual, partly to see how much was given freely by so many with only a brief thank you in return (not even a tax write off as we are a for-profit hospital), and mostly to see the pure amazement and joy in the eyes and giggles of the kids, even the Grinchiest of staff experienced their heart growing three sizes this morning...

a few of the younger kids, away most of the night and trying their best to be good, left Santa a stuffed animal and cookies and other little trinkets and when you consider these kids have little or nothing to their name and no power at all to get anything except what is given to them, these little gifts have as great a value as any gift I ever received... excuse me whilst I kvell... or qvell, even... talk amongst yourselves...

sigh...

it may be egocentric or arrogant of me, but in my innocent excitement I drove off into the early morning imagining that I was feeling just the tiniest bit of the feeling that a real Santa might feel after making his rounds and it was not all bliss and wonder, it was very hard work on my hands and knees setting up boxes and packages just right after sorting through so many hundreds... and after not sleeping for so long, my arms and legs and back are blissfully sore and my head is spinning with whatever sugarplums or fairies might actually look like... it is a sense of accomplishment, to know I have touched so many packages that are right now touching so many hearts...

the chills and euphoria of the feeling of giving unconditional love in actual physical effort is far overshadowing any lonely or achy feeling right now... and I'll just let it stay just like this for as long as it lasts...

and then it was home again to continue enjoying the excitement of the giving and the energy of the love that is rarely more alive in this world than at this time of year (and perhaps, sometime later, a bit of sleep) in the way I know best when I am alone (and the world around me is asleep), babble on...

Merry Happy... Everyone J

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)