Pain is Your Imbalance

      There's a lot of pressure around the holidays to feel the necessary warmth of pure human goodness that comes with the spirit of things.  But what if your stark city spirit is as numb as a limb that is still sleeping and unavailable when you go to move?  It's surprising even to me how far from human camaraderie I am as a jaded New Yorker.  I know one fabulous neighbor (perfectly named Angelica) in a building full of people.  The only reason I'm forced to see anyone at all is because I'm walking the dog and waiting for Harley to endlessly sniff the dying Christmas trees piled up outside our building.  I know honey, I love the smell too. These fallen soldiers of the environment get cut down every year in their prime all in the name of temporary home decor and the baby Jesus.  Then there's the worldwide tradition that comes with the big question "What am I gonna get?" Harls is obsessed with trees as I'm sure no other dogs are and I love when she gets little pine needles stuck in her fluffy white paws come early January.  Sometimes I recognize a familiar face but never catch any names.  It's an occasional hello but never anything deeper.  It's New York.
       This year I had the misfortune of being uninvited to Thanksgiving dinner the day before the actual event! Of course there was the legitimate excuse of illness as to why it might not be a good idea for me to come.  But nonetheless it reminded me of how isolated one can feel among all these millions and millions of strangers here on turkey day eve. Manhattan can be brutal. Every year the New York City police precincts are flooded with suicides as soon as the holidays roll around. A woman just recently jumped in front of an oncoming train a month ago just after her fiftieth birthday. She just couldn't take it anymore. Its the ugly urban Hallmark moments like this that make me miss my family and the simpler things in life. I very much miss the smell of my dad's roaring fireplace and the honeysuckle trees scenting the fresh country air around my house. You couldn't buy that smokey sweetness in a bottle if you tried! Firesuckle by Jo Malone? Maybe you could call the magical mixture Honeypit? I dream of fluffy, flaky biscuits and white sausage gravy; the two plastic tea containers I grew up with that are stained so dark from over twenty-five years of Lipton tea bags that they could serve no other purpose; buttery home made sour dough bread and pink lemonade...........mmmmmm; BBQ shrimp; cajun cheesy garlic bread; shrimp enchiladas; shrimp everything actually; the gallons and gallons of plain vanilla ice cream hidden in my dad's freezer accompanied with the pecan pies nobody's supposed to know about.  Boy are those two deserts destined to be married in my wildest fat girl's weakest moments! My secret compulsion is mashing the warm pie up into the ice cream and proceeding to eat all my feelings. I'm about as legitimately homesick as a boy can be and it doesn't matter your age or maturity when it comes to that inner country ache.  Sometimes I just miss the quiet that comes with a Tennessee walk through the woods with my dog off leash or a quiet smoke alone with just me and the fat lazy cows in my back yard.  They certainly aren't calling the cops on me for a little j. because they are way too busy pretending they don't have flies on their eyeballs and chomping down on cheeks fulls of grass and semi-dry hay.  Southern comfort lingers on the outskirts of my sleepy dreams and the sound of a country violin underscores it all.  I'm a Southern boy with a modern twisssssst. I've somehow subdued my city Phoenix and unsuppressed my desperate need for simplicity and the silence of a sensible day hiking in the Smokies with the fam. When the big rocks in Central Park are hollow and too perfectly placed and you can hear the echo when you jump on them........I can completely identify.