The Healing Wound

I am in pain.

I am suffering immensely. It's been a long time since I've been hungover. The day after Christmas and I can't even get out of bed. My muscles twitch uncontrollably, larger muscle groups are too weak to move. There is a general malaise over my body. I am close to death. This is what I feel like when I'm hung over. I feel wasted. Really. Wasted.

I woke up this morning, not sick but not well. I knew what it was from, this kind of overwhelming illness. It wasn't because I drank entirely too much, but instead that I drank too many different beverages. I had hard cider, beer, wine and champagne. A mixture like that can and will turn damaging. Especially when they are all organic. Yeah, organic.

My brother and I meet at Madison Avenue Starbucks, which happened to be closed on Christmas for our regular Christmas Dinner at Madison Square Garden. We do it every year. We live for it. It's a chance for us to go and enjoy Christmas with New York's population of Skeksis'. Why do we do it? Well, not just because the food is quite good, but because we don't want to forget from where we came from. We don't want to lose track of the fact that there were Christmases where we had nowhere to go and because soup kitchens were closed, nothing to eat. How many people now currently feel as if they have nothing to attend and that no one cares. No reason to count themselves as one of the living, no reason to be of any cheer.

This big spread at Madison Square Garden is a thing of beauty, even because they anticipate the approach of the Skeksis. Not only is the food good, it is plentiful. More plentiful than you can possibly imagine. The Skeks, being true to their nature, come in droves and at one time, probably when MSG first arranged this dinner, they were allowed to go for seconds. True to Skeksis fashion, they no doubt went for seconds, thirds, fifths and eighths. Being slick, they probably went through asking for something to hold the food in and left with bags of dinners for themselves, to waste. The proverbial saying, eyes bigger than stomachs applying here.

The gods of MSG no doubt saw this and compensated, by bringing even more food than the greedy can carry. And like greedy flies, these buzzards swoop and gather in larger and larger numbers, leaving with shopping carts filled with dinners, sodas, cakes. One would almost feel for these wretched cretins if it wasn't for the fact that many of these people aren't taking this food home. They aren't taking food for family and friends on this festive occasion. They are taking it to horde for oneself. How do I know this? Because THAT is the WAY of the Skeksis. It's a zero sum game to them. All for me and none for you.

The Skeks can be seen running from MSG less than an hour after it opens with bags of food larger than they are. Like ants at an anthill, pushing a sugar cube larger than their bodies. These fuckers pile it on thick, and MSG is ready for them. They fill hungry hands and still have enough for everyone else. Incredible. We go in, grab an enormous plate of food between the two of us, and then search the expansive dining area to find a table where we can sit. We find one filled with Skeks, doing what they do best...getting up to go to the food lines, to gather up seconds and thirds. They work at the table with mechanical efficiency, packing food in bags, sorting meats from vegetables, from cakes and sodas. They are up and down, going from line to table to line to table. Of the eight people, male and female at our table, my brother and I are the only two that do not get up to get seconds and thirds. We remain bowed over our plates, eating away. We pack food in our bellies, not into tupperware.

These skeks are obnoxious, sloppy, outrageously loud and incredibly dimwitted, even though they are very careful to pack away the foods that they want and to us all the space in their bags available to them. They are busy working like beavers on a dam. We finish and OBSIDIAN and I make our way out, with my brother stopping for a brief moment to get a take home plate to go. We roll out of the door happy, loving this part of Christmas, thanking everyone there. It was time to move on.

We hopped the Way and headed across town and then into Brooklyn only after walking back and forth across the length of New York in search of a liquor store that would sell wine on Christmas. There were none open. We looked and looked and came up goose egg. Finally we decided that we might have better luck in Brooklyn and rode in.

We didn't fare any better in Brooklyn. We stopped by a corner bodega and bought a few six packs of Heiniken and carted them upstairs with us. My brother and I were the first there, and we started off playing music on 'Nessa's cool turntable which played vinyl records. Impressive. Soon, others arrived and we settled down to dining and drinking and engaging conversations. It was a wonderful evening and we skated right through it to the point where no one wanted to leave to go home. But these things are inevitable and in time, I could tell, 'Nessa was getting tired. Late became later, and there was no letting up on the conversations. I played wet blanket and called the party to an order to dissolve it. It faltered, but did not close down. On my second attempt, about an hour later, it finally folded. It was time to leave 'Nessa to her home.

We stepped out into the night and we said goodnight to the rest of the company, a pair of brothers who were sharp as razors conversationalists and we promised to stay in touch. My brother and I made our way back to the Way, and on the train back to the city. I left him in the subway, heading up town to 96th Street.

I had made it home.

It was an excellent Christmas. I just drank too much organic stuff.
Or maybe just too much.

Whatever,

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