Dry Ice Factory

Ode on Melancholy
by John Keats

NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

At some point in the not too distant past, I came to realize that I far preferred Thanksgiving to Christmas, as far as holidays go. Thanksgiving had all the things I like about a holiday -- getting together with my family, traditional food, time off, relaxed good cheer -- while Christmas had too much of what I don't like -- stress, rampant consumerism, feelings of dark, desperate inadequacy.

Sometime after that realization, my family agreed on all this and agreed that we would just get presents for the kids and concentrate on the good food and relaxed good cheer otherwise. So the X-mas stress has mostly gone away, and now I find that the season sneaks up on me and leaves me with a bewildered "Huh?" stuck embarrassingly to one lip like a forgotten morsel of fruitcake. Is it ... is it Christmas now?! I feel like the village idiot, trying to figure out what all the excitement is about. I mean, it's gotten to the point where I've forgotten how stressful and horrible the season is, and yet I can't get into the whole jolliness thing either. Instead I sit here with the vaguely panicked sense that I should be feeling something.

So what's a village idiot to do? Hm. Maybe a bottle of port would distract me in an appropriately seasonal way. Yeah, that's the spirit! Here's to the solstice and longer days!