Two very short essays today.
Christmas
delusions
It's an odd thing about people in the desert; come the
Christmas decorating season, they seem to want to pretend not to be in the
desert. In my neighborhood, twinkling lights strung on saguaros, or even lit
ornaments hanging from them are common, though I think that's more a matter of
celebrating what you've got instead of wanting what you don't have. At any rate,
the effect is more one of Southwest festivity rather than of a cactus in pine-tree
clothing. The Southwest theme is also evident in the many houses with luminarias
lining their paths. Those have spread elsewhere, but I think they derive from Old
and New Mexico and Arizona originally. Originally luminarias were just paper bags
filled half-full of sand, with a candle sitting in the sand. It gives a warm
golden glow through the brown paper. These days they're more apt to be plastic and
electrified, but the effect is similar.
The denial is factored in to
some decorations that have been becoming much more common in the last few years.
It's always (since the advent of electric Chistmas lights, anyhow) been common to
outline your house in twinkling bulbs, either white or clear. Lately, though,
almost every house in the neighborhood has its roofline dripping with icicle
lights instead of a straight line. Sometimes these are so thickly gathered as to
look more like a wide band of tiny lights, sometimes they are spread widely enough
to show the icicle effect.
If icicles in the blistering deserts
aren't weird enough, there are the streams. Many houses here have desert
landscaping instead of grass, and for good reason. Much less work is required,
less of our precious water is required -- we're in year eight of a severe drought
-- and native plants adapt better to our climate. Like the real desert around us,
these mini desert-scapes often contain small washes, sculpted stream-beds picked
out with smooth rocks. WHat more and more people are doing during the holidays is
to convert these into flowing streams. When done well, this involves strings of
twinkling blue lights scattered randomly along the stream bed. Of course, some
people don't quite get the idea, and use other colored lights, or lights that
don't twinkle, or lay the light-strings out ruler-straight so the effect looks
less like a sparkling stream and more like a string of lights accidentally left on
the ground.
Between cactus Christmas trees, icicle lights hagingin up
in 70-degree weather, and blue streams coursing across desert lawns, not to
mention the snow a nearby town sets up one day every winter for the kids to play
in, I'm convinced many of my neighbors are in denial. Next they'll invent glowing
white sheets to lay on the gravel to simulate snow in the front yards.
Ooops....maybe I shouldn't mention that idea too
loudly.
Cheers and Beauty
For
some reason, this morning at the gym my mind kept running over what I think was
one of the finer moments in the old TV show Cheers. In the episode, Coach's
daughter was visiting. I don't remember the actress's name -- I think she also
played the secretary in Moonlighting -- but she was either very plain or
was made up to look plain. Think of Adrienne in the first Rocky movie.
Coach believed his daughter was beautiful, and had always told her so, but she had
a much harsher view f her own looks -- and the show's audience was clearly meant
to agree with her. Her father couldn't understand why she never went on dates or
had a boyfriend, and she couldn't seem to explain to him. FInally in desperation,
she stepped back into a bright light and said, "Daddy, look at me! For get I'm
your daughter and really look at me! What do you see??"
He looked and
got very solemn, and whispered, "Oh, my God."
Then his eyes filled
with tears, and he said, "You look.... you look just like your
mother."
I think the show's writers meant to make a point about
delusions and families being hopelessly partial because the daughter's next line
was an emphatic, "Exactly! And Mom was not..." then, very gently, "Not...
comfortable with her own beauty, you know that." But if that's what they intended,
it's not the point I took. To me, it speaks of love and of the subjective nature
of beauty. Of course she was only a fictional bit character on an old TV show, but
I have a tendency to believe in imaginary characters, having spent too much of my
childhood in a world where the only people who shared many of my interests and
feelings were fictional. I can't help hoping that shortly after that episode, she
found a man* as loving and honest as her father, and that that conversation helped
her believe him when he told her she was beautiful.
*Note: I'm not just being heterocentric here, though I
confess that I wrote first, then thought. The show made it clear she was
interested in men.