The Basement of Christmas Present

It is Wednesday, a week before Christmas – here in the States – and I have not finished shopping nor completely entered into the Christmas spirit. And time flies.

It is early down here in the basement this morning, the basement home to my parents’ kitchen table upon which I write, home to my computer, home to the ping pong table presently littered with notebooks and blank, stretched canvas, palette knives, books, and an old laptop. Home to three electric guitars including one bass, the queen bed I bought in Lowell, MA sometime back in the early 2000’s after fleeing a relationship and upon which sit many of my unsold paintings stacked against two walls along with drawings and paintings on paper strewn over the covering quilt. Home to a Fender solid state amplifier and a Kustom bass amp tucked under the ping pong table and also under it the few Christmas presents I have bought hiding not so much in plain sight as unchartered territory atop large boxes filled with who knows what. Also down here is a two roll-out drawer which belongs to my wife Susan and is filled mostly with her important papers and documents and a few of mine, and atop which sit maybe 100 unsold copies of my various poetry and fiction books, nearly all fairly deep in the red financially, though which do provide when I glance their way occasionally scattered moments of thrill and wonder and, often, satisfaction.

In another nine or 10 days, after Christmas, I am due to receive 50 copies of my just-being-printed book “Get in the Car”, many of which I will add to the stacks on the chest of double drawers, some I will place on the back seat of my car with the intention to promote and hawk my writing far more hands-on and person-to-personally than I have with the others. In fact I am in the process of writing a separate piece about this ‘guerilla’ sales plan. Posting here soon.

My monthly calendar for this year, put together last year, hangs high on a wall directly in front of me and my Morning Pages, displaying December. I did not make a calendar this year after many years of doing just that, so I am in the dark about what will hang in that spot come January, I guess I hope I’ll find a free one somewhere, like maybe a barber shop or the credit union. Or perhaps something cheap, unique, and weird on-line.

They say rain is coming later today and to stay at least through Saturday. It is a hard, heavy rain coming they say. As I have the obligation to deliver my son Spenser to his day program at 9:30 this morning, I can hopefully just thereafter shop a little more, so as to remain dry, and become even more at one with the holiday spirit.

This Wednesday. When I’m up from the basement.