December 26, 2013
In the United Kingdom, today is "Boxing Day", traditionally, the day servants and tradesmen received gifts from their employers. It extends Christmas one more day, while in the United States, December 26 is a back-to-work day for most.
Come dusk on Christmas Day, many feel a certain emotional deflation: the champagne and wine have been drunk, the meal eaten, the living room is a sea of torn wrapping paper, and most people think they spent more than they intended. The bills will come in January, and it is now undeniably winter.
In New York, where the temperatures are in the low thirties, the winter light bounces off the buildings, the limestone ones in particular. It's a far cry from the heat of Jerusalem.
However, Christmas hasn't ended. In fact, it's just begun --for Christians, at any rate. Father Rafferty, the priest who celebrated Christmas Mass in "Ascension" parish, my parish, yesterday morning, made it a point to explain this fine point of the liturgical calendar before delivering the final blessing and dismissal. I'm glad he said it, the thought Christmas isn't a one-day wonder comforts me.
Christmas was a simple and solo affair for the most part. Beau and I arose at 7:30 a.m., and I let him run a good ways, even admitting him to the dog run for the first time in his life. He was bemused by the scene, with so many dogs larger --and smaller--greeting him with the canine equivalent of a punch in the face: putting their maws on his neck and forcing him down onto the ground. Within fifteen minutes he was bathed in dust, and I knew he would get a bath before bed. (I also resolved to find him more polite friends.)
Beau having romped, I still had enough time to return him home and cycle to 97th Street and back along Riverside Drive before Mass. The weather was gelid! Even colder with the wind blowing in my face as I sped along; but perversely, I enjoyed the furious pedaling I indulged myself in: on Christmas Day, I could be heedless along a road usually choked with speeding cars. I went to Mass, then bought my Christmas dinner at West Side Market, which was doing a good business. "Harvest Soup", a creamy, burnt orange concoction, paired with a cheesy foccacia, followed by polenta topped with parmesan cheese into which I mixed arugula. Dessert was chocolate pudding. Nursery food all, but not unsuitable.
Today was for cleaning up the last of the papers dislodged by the move-out Beau's advent mandated. I had to go to midtown for a variety of reasons, then to the vicinity of Zabar's, and then 96th Street. I was laden with bags of items that had to be delivered, exchanged, returned for credit. When I returned home, all I wanted to do was to ramble with Beau in Riverside Park.
I put his new buckle-closure collar and leash on --the latter 6' in length. We descended to the street, out the building, across Broadway and headed for Riverside Park. Beau's excitement makes him criss-cross the streets diagonally: I think it's because he doesn't want to miss anything, he wants to take it all in. On the Drive he became even more animated, scampering, picking up sticks and carrying them in his mouth, while keeping up his pace, which a musician would recognize as prestissimo. Down the stairs to the heart of the park we went. Here Beau let loose in explosive bursts of energy, leaping his height and bounding. Is there anything as joyful as a happy puppy giving vent to his animal spirits?
My late friend, Jon Messmann, the writer of "adult" westerns I've mentioned before, once pointed out a phrase of Emerson's that applies here. "All the world loves a lover" Jon said, has more than one meaning. Conventionally, it's taken to mean that the general public is well-disposed to those in love. However, it can also be meant to say that a person happy in the grip of a passion --for another, for his work-- gives joy to those who perceive his condition.
The expression describes my feeling at the moment perfectly, although I would add Keats' A thing of beauty is a joy forever to my considerations:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
For those of us susceptible, beautiful things --people, animals, things --imprint themselves on our memories and live there. Surely that is what Keats was saying in his poem.
Today, though, in an age that rejects the ideal of "beauty", it is more likely that someone will say "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". --But that is to miss the point. For those responsive to beauty, the encounter with the perceived thing embodying the inherent nature of the beautiful --its quiddity-- is a profoundly joyous experience.
I find Beau so lovely. --Looking at him, I can understand why, in the 19th century, young men courting women were called beaux, why a paradigm of all the virtues of a type is called a beau ideal. Permitting myself to revel in the little dog's beauty and love of life is good for my soul.
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