Tao Of Puke

First, restless sleep and watery mouth.

Up come the soft tacos, over the front porch, aimed for the bushes and carefully past the Christmas lights wrapped around the rails.

The throat and nasal passages burn with stomach acid and the tortilla and the meat and the cheese and the cheaply processed Old El Paso Mexican seasoning.

Then, more. And more.

And more.

It's gone. All gone.

(When it is gone, it is gone. Even when it's all over and the years have passed, never again will soft tacos come anywhere the stomach again).

Go to the refridgerator. Throw the leftovers to the dog. The thought of them even existing hurts the body.

Trudge to the shower. Go to work. Walk in, turn around, come home.

Ride by the drug store and come to the very real conclusion that "if someone must live the rest of his life in such all-encompassing pain, how is there any justice in the world that Jack Kevorkian is in prison?"

Stumble through the door, defeated. Fall on the couch. Doesn't feel good. Feels necessary.

Pepto Bismol. It tastes better coming up than the food did.

Some Ginger Ale to "settle the stomach."

Up it comes. Tastes better than the Pepto Bismol.

Think: amazing how in a matter of a few hours a human being's perception of what tastes good or bad is so drastically altered.

Lips are dry. Leg muscles heavy like sand bags. Body is begging for liquid.

More Ginger Ale. If it comes up, it comes up.

It does.

It doesn't taste bad. Masks the acid.

No food. Dry lips.

Watch "Dukes of Hazzard." Fall asleep.

Wake up. Watch "The Two Towers." Fall asleep.

Wake up. Watch "40 Year Old Virgin." Fall asleep.

Wake up. Check the scale. Ten pounds gone in four days.

Go to work. Pray for an easy day.

Everything must be finished today.

Wrapped brownie resting on the chair. No thanks.

Pass by the Christmas food table. Oreos, no. Nuts, no. Fudge brownie cake, no.

So hungry. Fear being hungry.

Store brand diet soda. Yes?

Pretzels. Three?

Soda. Yes.

Pretzels. Yes.

More soda. More pretzels.

Bathroom.

Fling tie over shoulder.

Beg for more mercy.

Everything must be finished.

Throw the rest of the soda in the trash.

Go to work.

Everything is finished.

Go home.

Chicken noodle soup sounds good ...

A Dark Prison

I am deathly afraid of the dark.

Or maybe it's darkness, if there is such a difference.

The idea of the dark and the wretched place it traps me in.

It brings out an involuntary, arresting fear in me. When it descends each night, I can't imagine not being terrified. Then, when the sun rises, I can't imagine how I could be so frightened in the very home that shines with the morning light.

It's part of the reason why I decided to sleep in my cold, powerless home, when just a few miles away -- at my in-laws' house -- I had the comfort of power and heat and microwaveable meals and Sportscenter and conversation and security available to me.

The ice storm knocked out power to 700,000 homes in this upper region of South Carolina. Ours was one of them. My family fled to a more-accustomed environment.

I stayed behind. I told myself it was because I didn't want to leave my house vulnerable. That I just liked being there. That I liked the idea of "camping." That I wanted to know what it must be like when less fortunate people must endure the consequences of not having the money to pay their electric bills.

It was none of those.

I wanted to face fear. To face the terror of being alone, with nothing but a few candles and a fireplace to remind me that I am not completely consumed by darkness, both within and without.

It's amazing how quickly you can enter an entirely unfamiliar world. You notice the moon is full. You are kin to the old ages. You hear the ringing of silence in your ears if you pay attention to the absence of sound.

You are a prisoner of your thoughts -- and those thoughts are of the kind that makes it so you must always leave the television on, even when you go to bed, because it signifies that there is some measure of life filling the house.

I suppose I have little faith when light isn't there to guide me. Against all that is natural, I find myself convinced that the sun might not rise.

Time slows down in the dark. The silence is deafening.

It thrusts me into a bizarre world. Not within my house, but within myself. It's a dark place. Darker than the home itself.

The sudden buzz is terrifying. My cell phone is set to vibrate before it rings. On the way home, I had called my friend who lives nearby to tell him that if he and his fiance were cold, I had a fireplace and they could come over and stay somewhat warm.

The phone was vibrating on the kitchen counter, like some kind of bomb or exotic beast prepared to eat me. I felt my lungs abruptly sucking in the cold air.

I didn't want to answer it. Strange. A way out of the world I had plunged myself into, yet I wanted no part of the world I'm used to.

I spoke with him. He had just seen "King Kong."

Movies. Yes, they make those. There is a world out there. And people watch movies. But it is abstract. This is reality. I am reality. And it's just me.

It's time to hang up. Time to return to the darkness. It's why I didn't want to answer the phone.

Sleep mercifully comes. Morning brings cold sunshine. The ice is melting.



I'm not sure what I learned from that night. It might sound to the outside observer to be a strange, trivial matter.

But it changed me in ways that I can't yet explain.

I learned that I am afraid to live inside my own mind.

And that's even more frightening than the darkness.

"Not Only Is Christmas Getting Too Commercial, It's Getting Too Dangerous"

Each year, when I listen to the subdued sound of the piano and hiss of the jazz drum and the meandering bass, all embellished with the engaging crackle of time, I wish for one thing.

Not a bike or a Mace Windu lightsaber or an Xbox 360.

Not wonderful things like extra-potent egg nog or world peace or pictures of children who've wet their pants sitting on Santa's lap.

Each time I hear the effortless simplicity of "A Charlie Brown Christmas," all I wish is that this could be the first time I've heard it. Or the first time I've seen Linus stick his tongue out to catch the snow and say, "Mmm, needs sugar."

We spend a lot of time trying to make Christmas into Christmas. It's a lot of work.

But quiet your mind and listen to the perfectly deliberate imperfection of Earth-bound cherubs singing. Watch as a decades-old cartoon casts off pretention and moralism to capture the essence of a life worth living, spoken through a thumb-sucking theologian carrying a security blanket.

---

The problem with a lot of Christian programming is that it lacks depth. It grossly lacks depth, in fact. It fails to simply offer the message as a passive invitation and leave it up to the audience to feel it for themselves.

Charles Schultz had to know this when he refused 40 years ago -- yes, since 1965 it's appeared on network television -- to dub in canned laughter. He didn't fear the quiet pauses that move a piece a little slower but allow a breath for reflection.

He also used real children's voices, and only a few were actually trained actors or speakers. Jazz was unheard of for a Christmas special.

Reading scripture on TV was revolutionary back 40 years ago. You would think that wouldn't be the case, given how many people complain about how we can't say Merry Christmas these days and worry that Christmas will become extinct for some non-specific holiday.

It will never happen. At least "A Charlie Brown Christmas" never will. Well, never's a long time, but the demand for the easily accessible yet authentic spiritual experience will always be there.

Simple yet woven and profound.

The story goes that the producer of the cartoon who helped Schultz fight off the demands of comformity and dilution wrote the words to "Christmas Time Is Here" on the back of an envelope because he had to make a minor concession to CBS and provide at least one song with lyrics as was custom with Christmas specials.

It was an afterthought from a man who wasn't a musician. But the words sound like anything but an afterthought. The spirit of the whole project was infectious.

You could almost say it was divine intervention.