The true meaning of Christmas (cookies)

As soon as I gave the cookie away, I regretted it. “I don’t need money, but please give food,” read the man’s sign, conveniently matching the lack of cash and presence of a wrapped baked good in my pocket. I handed it off and took a moment of self-congratulation at my benevolence. It was soon replaced with an obsession that grew with each step away from that cookie.  Where could I get another one? What kind of grocery store carried that kind of cookie and would be open late on Christmas Eve? And the most embarrassing thought: Maybe he’d give it back?

the one that got away

Twenty-four hours earlier I hadn’t even known that soft spice cookies with chunks of crystallized ginger existed. But it had been handed to me, free, for answering the coffee shop trivia about what all snowflakes have structurally in common (six sides). It hung out in my pocket for a day, waiting for a moment when low blood sugar coincided with deciding I’d earned the reward. Without noticing, I’d developed a vivid conviction about how satisfying that cookie would be.

My friends and I had just finished dinner and a movie, in the vein of rewriting Christmas traditions for adulthood, when I spotted the man with the refreshing sign.  Logically, it made sense to give the thing away – my stomach was full with meal and movie popcorn; it would be hours before I should let myself eat again. I could practically feel myself getting fat. And here was a man who may have swallowed nothing recently, other than his pride. Objectively, giving the cookie away was the right thing to do.

But it all came so fast. Walking briskly, talking with my friends, there were only seconds to act before the man with the humble sign would be in the past, a point of Christmas regret. I hadn’t time to say my goodbyes, to accept full responsibility for what it meant to part with the cookie. Yet it was gone. My brain reminded me it was owed a jolt of sugar. My salivary glands scoffed at the insufficiently gingery selections on the menus I passed on the way back to my car.

An opportunity to practice acceptance of the loss inherent in life, I reminded myself. If I can get over this cookie, then maybe I’ll be ready for dating. Didn’t I hear that sacrifice and loss come with a relationship? Grandiose aspirations. At the next late-night grocery, I was buying some Tate’s White Chocolate Macadamias, closest thing I could find to the one that got away.

O heart, be thou not fickle. How does such a brief encounter make such a lasting impression? Was this love, or something more of a base, animal nature? During the movie, my hand kept returning to the cookie in my pocket, seeking that reassurance she was still there, that there might be the possibility of a more intimate encounter later that night. I did have a thing growing up for sampling the cookies put out for Santa. Perhaps my panic echoed Christmas traditions long dead?

Or was my cookie-love more related to the strangely dystopian advertising jingle playing when I’d entered the AMC theater – “If you’re feeling scared, go get a snack / If you’re feeling bored, have a snack….” It was Christmas, a time not without its heartstring puppetry. Many a lover in the past helped me both avoid and relive the disappointment of the holidays. Had I simply switched out partner for pastry, like so many obese Americans before me?

How long do we wait at dark buildings
 before realizing no one will show up?

The Tate’s rode next to me to church, unopened, as a testament to my virtue and restraint. I have to admit I was relieved to find the church dark as I arrived half an hour early. It’s been years since I had a regular church home, and this would be a new experiment, one that had called to me from the online newspaper listings of Christmas Eve services. Rather than feel pulled to go in early and socialize, the dark building gave me time to do what I most felt like – to start writing down the thoughts revolving around the cookie affair. In a strange twist, the only blank paper in my car was the disposable cup from that café where the cookie was obtained, and the first paragraphs of this essay literally circle around it.

Google, the overeager gift-giver

Ten-thirty came and went with the church still dark, and I checked the church service listing on my phone again. The top date on the page indeed said December 24, 2014. Then I noticed a second date below –from 1997.  Like an off-base gift from someone you didn’t get anything for, the published Christmas service listing I’d followed had been an ancient archive unearthed by an overeager Google. I was tracing a Christmas route that would have worked 17 years ago, but was clearly not appropriate tonight. Did I even want to be in church, with the confusion of a familiar story rehashed by strangers? A foggy mixture of duty and opportunity had guided my Christmas intuition back when I was 21, and it had shown up again in persisting toward a church service when what I most wanted at the moment was to write. It’s so easy, when searching for something in the present, to trip over the past.

How much of a Christmas answers the needs of today, rather than reverberating the echoes of the past? If we keep traditions alive, do they make room for the present, for realities and people with us now? Or do traditions rigidly aim to please those long dead – who perhaps never loved us as much as rituals seemed to promise? I saw this year that in less than 24 hours I can invest a piece of cooked dough in my pocket with all the fantasy and expectation I used to lay on imperfect loved ones. I dreamt about partaking, but avoided taking a bite. Like cookie, like family – on some level I knew it never could satisfy me completely, but that doesn’t make it any easier letting go.

I hope that cookie helped, and the man got more of what he needed this Christmas. How much similar unresolved internal conflict keeps us from sharing with the many homeless people who obviously have more pressing problems? If it weren’t for a man with a unique sign, I might still be holding onto my chewy symbol of the past. If we pattern our holidays based on 17-year-old information, sometimes they lead us to dark, abandoned places. There can be a freedom in letting go of traditions – and sometimes, a cookie is just a cookie. (I enjoyed half the Tate’s while writing this).

Christmases past have been stressful affairs about finding the “right” gifts for others, banking on a certain recognition for my efforts, and demanding enough of a haul to satisfy my own entitlement. Christmases recently have been more creative affairs, delving into what I might have authentically of myself to give – curated music mixes, pieces of writing like this. Like beggars asking for money, many people out there may be looking for the same kind of reducible Christmas experience. But if we don’t look up from the reverberating past, we may miss that something simpler and unexpected can bring more joy.

It may be the very thing you've been carrying in your pocket all along.

'Melancholia' and the advantage of the Abused

Lars von Trier says, in an interview regarding his recent release Melancholia, that

"You can skate across the polished surface in this film. The style is polished, but underneath the smooth surface, there's content. And to get to that, you need to look beyond the polish. But the worst thing to happen was when they said at Nordisk Film: There are some beautiful images,” 

This film has beauty, and it is seductive.  Images of the landscape, the castle, the wedding reception, and of Kirsten Dunst can draw us in.  Von Trier admits the finished picture had a "plastic" quality that nearly turned his own stomach against it.  The filmmaker's creation has almost bested him.  And moreso it may his audiences.  Search the online reviews; few can describe what this movie is about other than the obvious, superficial elements.

On that superficial level, I have to say the film disappoints.  There are no plot twists.  There is no escape from the inevitable.  There is only a witness of how various characters respond to an impending crash of planets.

There is, however, a deeper statement, reflected in the transformation of Dunst's character Justine: from helpless, depressed, and crushed by the weight of everyday life - to clear, direct, purposeful and productive - all as the crisis draws nearer.  It is no coincidence that the character in whom this transformation takes place is a survivor of sexual abuse.

I expect most reviews will miss this background of Justine's character, but the evidence is all there, subtly and unmistakably.  The father who is obsessed with women he jokingly names "Betty" - bringing two of them to the wedding - which we later learn is his pet-name for his daughter.  The mother who openly scorns the marriage ceremony, who later bitterly explains, "I wasn't there when that man had a crack at her body, I wasn't there for her first sexual experience, why should I be there for this stupid ritual."  And, finally, Justine's growing panic as her new husband undresses to consummate their union, requesting a moment to herself - during which she impulsively and violently rapes an innocuous wedding guest in the sand trap on the golf course.   Justine has transferred forward the violence done to her, engaging in anonymous sex, often the only kind of sexuality with which the child victim of sexual abuse can identify.

Justine's history as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse - which is so subtly told it will be lost on most audiences, I'm afraid - provides a crucial backdrop for her prevalent present features: her crippling depression and her strange clarity and strength as the end of the world nears.

Part I, "Justine," shows Justine's debilitating mental illness: the wedding is admittedly a performance, a last-ditch effort to revive her spirits.  Yet it is a failure, she cannot live on her own and ends up back at the castle estate on which her sister's family lives.  She spends days in bed and needs help being lifted physically to the dinner table or the bath.  She is a woman who cannot summon the energy to participate in everyday life on the same terms as others.

There is a thread connecting the instances of Justine's energy, and this is part of the genius of von Trier's script:  Justine comes alive only at opportunities to engage with truth.  She actively seeks out her mother to reveal her feelings of confusion and fear, only to be smote by her mother's jealous bitterness.   Justine shows surprising initiative at chasing down her father and arranging him a room to stay the night, because she needs to speak with him about "something important."  The incestuous father, however, sensing the possible encounter with the truth of his past transgressions, finds the excuse to flee from the confrontation.  The husband of her dreams, while making dull attempts at kindness in providing a fantasy life for her, cannot himself deal with the truth of her depression, but escapes into the  bottle of Hennessy and by burying his face in her breasts, hungry for sex.  When Justine leaves her husband in his state of excitement, she is an abuse victim not just fleeing from stigmatized sex, but also intolerant of her partner's inability to face her truth.

As this pattern repeats in part II, it becomes evident that Justine's depression is not an individualized disease (as our medical model would have it), but rather that she is sapped of life as her key connections stake out their commitments to flee from the truth.  As the collision with the planet Melancholia becomes more inevitable, the other adults flee - one through suicide, and the other into flailing fantasy and despair.  Meanwhile, the character Justine answers a nighttime muse to bathe nude and touch herself in the light of the approaching planet Melancholia, symbolically drinking in the truth about her melancholy, which all the functioning world would deny her.

Robbed of the stability that would have come from healthy boundaries being respected in her upbringing, Justine, like all abuse survivors, at a young age had her world turned upside down.  While she is incapable of functioning in a functioning world, she conversely possesses the unique ability to draw strength from chaos - for in the chaos, there is truth.  As Justine says, "life is evil;"  the functioning world, like her father, would hide its chaotic violence and put on pretenses (such as the wedding) for their own benefit.  Yet, they crumble or flee when the truth eclipses their pretense.  Justine, however, finally has her nourishment: the unmistakeable approach of the destruction she has always known was there.   While her nephew's parents have abandoned him, she relates to him and steps up to show him the way through chaos: with dignity, they prepare, join together, and close their eyes to meditate while their destruction rips through them.   Von Trier explains:

"We are [alone].  But no one wants to realize it. They keep wanting to push limits and fly wherever,” he laughs. “Forget it! Look inward.”

As eloquently as Pema Chodron might put it, Lars von Trier shows that truth cannot be met by our common, cowardly impulses toward escape.  And in facing the truth, the struggles that trauma survivors  have gone through to grapple with their own worldly handicaps will actually serve them well.  Jesus did say, "the last will be first."

Regardless of whether the world ends suddenly with planets colliding, or whether melancholy gradually eclipses us as our trusted sources of stability in life are compromised, Melancholia asks us to consider how we will face truth.  Will we plan, like Claire, to put on Beethoven's 9th, drink good wine, and try to make it "nice"?  Or, like Justine, will we have the courage to meet truth with truth, call those sorts of plans "shit," and prepare in all seriousness as best we are able?

Anyone commenting on or reading about von Trier's film has felt the truth of the film resonating within them.  Are we content to comment on the superficial, plastic elements of the film, or will we try to probe deeper for the source of this truth within us?  Will we allow ourselves to be seduced, like an abuser, into thinking that beauty is all there is to be had - or will we force ourselves to keep asking questions, until the reality of the destruction becomes something we accept?

If you have been abused, you have in your experience an advantage in answering this for yourself.

one part of the response

Dead prez was right. Only its not just skin color. It's BS passed down as abuse by weak human beings who can't face their problems. We have to fight the lies. But we have to fight it first in ourselves. or nothing changes

Candice Isaacs McCormick, R.I.P. 7/22/2010

Venn diagram

All of the pain that was done to me
All that was robbed from me, that I never learned
About loving, about living in family, and real relationships
About being a child
About being wrong
And still being loved
About struggling as a man honestly, and accepting less than perfection
All the touch I never felt
And comfort I never received
These things I never knew that I never knew
And the tears I never cried
Belong in the first circle.

All the pain I have done
And continue to do
Which was only my fault
All the love that was rushed
By my angst of aloneness
All the good love starved of presence
By my anxiety of sitting still
All the trust I have shattered
And hearts I have dropped
Pain I have caused
Sincere promises I have failed at
Excuses i've given
And demeaning of myself;
Plus a future of only the same
Because I am "not healthy enough yet for a relationship"
And thus never yet have been
Even throughout attempting bonds
I thought could meet both our needs
These fill up the second circle

And I in my tears
Am in the intersection
Seeing for the first time both
Stricken by both
Mourning both

Mourning the loss
Of a self never known, and never presented

Of the holes in my heart
I have bled onto others
Staining what I wanted to keep

Of the irresponsibility
Of so many choices I have made
For wrong reasons, or simply at the wrong time

Of a hurt that is living today
Given birth through me
That my truest intentions cannot change
Because I in this state
Can create no other.

No child,
No family,
No true love
Only pain

What I was not handed
I cannot pass on
And never will be able to of my own power


So Abba you may decide
What miracle to grant me
For I am destroyed just as I destroy
And am no more
Than the splinters at my feet

growing uncertainty

words about my father's ways
sprouting beliefs about myself
a long time trying to heal her, heal myself
by mowing down any sign of the same within me
never hearing which parts were ok
never hearing parts truly wrong
just the seed of choking vines
thriving in the dark
withering in light

but night

when I am alone
not just in bed, but inside myself
thuderclouds of worry and fear
keep me locked inside
I have no raingear

for her tears

simply water the seeds
of what I'd believed:
father that I never had
i am doomed to be;
husband she had dreamed about
I could never be.

A prayer for three friends.

the three I hold
have fears from old
and you, O lord,
forgive them.

We hope so fast
that in our grasp
the future'd pass
as given.

A trembling heart,
When pierced by doubt
May bleed a pool
to drown in.

We, floating on
that surface pond
at last know Your
dominion.

Our Father be,
three come with me.
Our rain becomes
a shelter

Absent Love,
We fall to dust
and lay before
our Maker.

Grains of sand
pass through our hands
as we pass through
your healing.

Hope and help,
when done ourselves,
betray our lack
of feeling.

For Yours alone
can bring us home
and fan the tears
once fallen.

one of the twenty words for snow

I wish the destruction of her house.

I wish the luscious flames to consume it in snowfall.

Her smile and shining foreheads of her family in the prarie

Turned to ash, tossed to breeze

wretched in its own disease.

Silence. And Howling: the wind through empty doorways.

A field on which to lay myself

And freeze my naked brittle sheath

To cracking shatter frost and gloom

where fragments of my loss maroon

on frozen blood spat underneath

Bound up in twisting coils of stale,

One of the twenty words for snow

now lays me down and throws away

the thoughts that haunt me everyday

of winter smiles in that old house.

Whale - orig June 5, 2005

do you think if I were dying

you would have wanted to stay?

out of complacence, duty, brevity of commitment,

intensity that shadows the world,

a calling to the higher,

a chance to be in control?

would you die with me?

a part of you was dying anyway.

would you plunge to hell to drop me off

and return to wipe the sweat from your brow?

do you want to collapse me, fold me,

and keep me in your soul? You are free to roam,

deliver me, be the whale and I Jonah?

Why insist to marry me

before the transplant?

Twice?

Why did you want to be a widow

but not my wife?

Why did you leave after

I called the transplant off?

Why promise to come back if I go to the hospital

no matter what?

Was I really so terrible

that life together seemed unbearable?

Now if I am dying,

do you regret what you’re missing?

If I promise to die,

Will you hold my hand and finally

let me see into your eyes?

Whale

do you think if I were dying

you would have wanted to stay?

out of complacence, duty, brevity of commitment,

intensity that shadows the world,

a calling to the higher,

a chance to be in control?

would you die with me?

a part of you was dying anyway.

would you plunge to hell to drop me off

and return to wipe the sweat from your brow?

do you want to collapse me, fold me,

and keep me in your soul? You are free to roam,

deliver me, be the whale and I Jonah?

Why insist to marry me

before the transplant?

Twice?

Why did you want to be a widow

but not my wife?

Why did you leave after

I called the transplant off?

Why promise to come back if I go to the hospital

no matter what?

Was I really so terrible

that life together seemed unbearable?

Now if I am dying,

do you regret what you're missing?

If I promise to die,

Will you hold my hand and finally

let me see into your eyes?

2005