Christmas chiaroscuro

Not a crock pot.

At least, I don't think so. The doubt I suggested earlier -- whether my new Kindle would turn out to be one of those gadgets that, once purchased, I would consign to a dark corner of the basement, never to be seen again -- was apparently unfounded.

During my train trip last week -- to Los Angeles, to join family for Christmas -- between my eating in the diner, drinking in the club car, talking to relatives who joined the train mid-journey in the Bay Area, and simply staring out the window and daydreaming -- I managed to read, in its entirety, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Once I arrived at our rented cabin at Big Bear Lake -- between my eating incessantly, drinking when not eating, talking to relatives who descended on Big Bear from all over the West Coast, and simply staring out the window at the snow, the trees and the deep blue sky -- I managed to read, in its entirety, Blue Nights, by Joan Didion.

My Kindle proved as helpful and as easy to use as I'd hoped. The two books I chose to read were well-written, fascinating, and possibly worthy of a future blog or two in their own right. Extremely Loud is about death, loss of loved ones, and the inability to know the ones you love even while they still live, told against a backdrop of (to some extent) the firebombing of Dresden and (to a significant extent) the catastrophe of Nine-Eleven in New York City. Blue Nights is about death, loss of loved ones, and the inability to know the ones you love even while they still live, told against a backdrop of the apprehension by its 75-year-old author that she not only was no longer a kid, but was, in fact, showing obvious and disturbing signs of mortality.

Ho ho ho! And a Merry Christmas to you all, boys and girls!

But like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and the tombstone etched with Ebeneezer's own name, my Kindle reading projected merely a dark background, against which the joyful revels of Christmas were rendered even sharper and more colorful -- a sense of temporality that caused one to welcome even more the warm company of close family, the renewal of acquaintance with distant family, and casual conversations with interesting family friends I'd never before met.

I'd hardly claim as an original observation that awareness of life's shortness often intensifies one's enjoyment of life's presence. Luckily for the progress of mankind, knowledge of our mortality isn't usually a debilitating depressant.

So I had a great time at Big Bear, despite (or because of) writings on my Kindle cautioning me to enjoy the present while it's still here to be enjoyed -- to shoo away the ghosts of the future, and join the guests celebrating at the banquet table of Christmas Present.

I'll have one more plate of turkey, Bob Cratchit, if I might? And God bless us, every one!