Happy Christmas <<First Name>>

Calling Home for Christmas

In this season It's really lovely to call Ireland on the phone and have my people say things like  - "sure we are closing today/tomorrow for the holidays" and "arrah nothing's gonna happen til the New Year, so no pressure". No really, that is great.  It's not lazy it's re-creative. I miss that concentrated Irish attention to the Christmas craic, to life, to meeting friends, to living in the season. The stretch of days off. It's nice. Saint Stephen's day- what?

It came as quite a shock to find myself one NY Christmas day (some years ago) seated in an office on the Bowery. Christmas day!? I was there in my 'big/new' tech job looking out over my desk at a red haired young Hoosier, a recent tech hire with a smig full of big red blisters and pus dripping out every one of them. He had one angry real eye and one dead glass eye swimming behind oval metal frames. And some sort of OCD. What did I do to deserve this I wondered, what could be so important to these bunch of cant's that I needed to be here on Christmas Day?!

So, learning lessons ( #1 avoid bollixes, above and below) I try to be self employed out here in the Sthates and keep away from that sort of carry on and these type of anti-craic vampires. (Lesson #2  Heellp! buy me sauce!)

Two T's in Hattwood
I just realized I may have a 'thing' for double consonants- I have two N's and two LL's in my name Munnelly and Two T's and two O's in Hattwood. Does it mean anything - is it a synchronicity, a Jungian signal from the unconscious? Nah, it isn't. Just look at Mississippi, its a triple mess of doubles. [And your point is exactly, John?]

Well, I have a show tomorrow in the city and I have a market stall on Sunday in Park Slope. So yeah.

Final wrap up thoughts for the decade.
On a nearly final, more serious note I will leave you with this wise aphorism; we should always learn from our experiences and never compare our inside life with someone else's outside- walk a mile in someone else's shoes.  At least then you will be a mile away and you will also have their shoes. (Kudos to my Brother Alan for that joke-punchline, he is quite something).

Merry Christmas,

I really appreciate you reading these silly/serious things I send out.

Love peace and tranquility,

PS put that phone down, go back to sleep,

John

PS I know... It's not Happy, it's Merry. Noted.