If you regularly follow this blog, you will have noticed the scarcity of entries lately. With Jim's two hip replacement surgeries only six weeks apart, the related rehab, plus travel to and from Lubbock, I've had to (gladly, mind you!) temporarily pick up slack for him.  Whining all the way, I keep getting bogged down in tasks Jim regularly accomplishes with more competence and less effort than I.
We've spent a lot of sleepless nights as he tries to get comfortable on two tender, freshly sliced buns. Even the dog has lost sleep. Added to my nursing duties, I had to get through Gallery Night, Alpine's annual show.
But now Jim's rehabing, gradually weaning off his cane and hiking the mountains; I made it thru Gallery Night without a meltdown. Life is returning to normal, and life is normally good.

Now I advocate painting regularly, not just when you're inspired or "in the mood". But in the past month, I haven't painted at all; I've scarcely had time to plan the four pastels I'm doing for Trappings of Texas. (Trappings is the Museum of the Big Bend's annual invitational custom western gear and art show and sale, opening in Alpine February 29, 2008. More on that in a future blog entry.) I'm behind on everything I'm doing, can only spell my last name on a good day and then only after three cups of expresso. I'm constantly praying I haven't forgotten to pay anybody who expects money from us in a timely manner.
And wouldn't you know it? Along comes Christmas. I wasn't prepared for Christmas season. It came, anyway.

We spent the first (crazy) part of the holiday season in noisy, bright and bustling Lubbock. Mom lives at Ransom Canyon, a small community so artistically lit every Christmas, you can barely get to her house after dark because of bumper-to-bumper sight-seers idling through the neighborhood. My dad loved stringing Christmas lights across the eaves, the windows, the trees. His sense of holiday well-being depended on displaying zillions of lights, which he religiously lit at the stroke of dusk each night. Daddy criticized any neighbor who refrained from doubling his December electric bill...one year, when the guy next-door installed more lights than Daddy, we adult kids seriously discussed giving Daddy an extra, dedicated circuit for outdoor lighting. Falling not far from the tree, my landscape architect brother Kelly Cook delights in constructing extravagant light displays in his Midland yard. His crowning achievement to date is an impressive string of life-sized flying reindeer tautly secured by rebar. Usually tautly secured. There's yet another untold story...apparently there's no brain damage, but ask Kelly about that scar on his nose. Happily, no reindeer were injured.

And any city Christmas season worth its salt includes a plethora of street corner Santas jingling annoying little bells designed to instill guilt at we who hurry past them, our arms laden with an abundance of essential groceries including freshly made macaroons, smoked salmon and brie. Tamales. Shrimp. Asparagus for the infamous, much-corrupted traditional family casserole, an artery-clogging dish taken from a recipe my 97-year-old great-aunt got from the lady who ran the boarding house my great-uncle lived in before they married. Stores hawk tree-sized poinsettias, fake trees, frosted trees, fresh trees and already-failing trees painted green to attract those who don't know the difference. Everywhere, holiday music blares, squeezing conscious thought from the far recesses of the stressed-out brain. Women parade around in gaudy Christmas sweaters a gal wouldn't be caught dead in any other month of the year. Lots of wine and liquor, candy, pie and cake is gifted and regifted. (I confess: I've never re-gifted wine or liquor. Or, fudge.) Annually, I religiously refuse to visit a mall after November 15, so I can't report on the shopping frenzy that must surely have been in progress while we were there.

Mid-December, we returned home to Fort Davis. I felt like I'd stepped from sparkling, shining, singing chaos into the Void. (Stay with me here, okay? I'm lapsing a little metaphysical now, but I'll get back to holiday basics, honest.)

In martial arts, an ultimate (rarely attainable) experience comes of entering a mindless state known as "the Void". Empty Mind. Sounds bad. Is good. Empty the mind, and the spirit emerges, each breath one with the universe. You simply are. Spar an opponent while flirting even on the outskirts of the Void and you'll win, regardless of the match's physical outcome. I didn't go there often, or stay there long, but I've felt it. The Void draws from and defines the fullness that surrounds it, and thus, the Void is the ultimate fullness.
 
Similarly, in fine art, the area surrounding an image is known as "negative space".  I know this sounds bad. Empty. Negative. But negative space is essential. Without negative space, a drawing is nothing but a clutter of line, an indefinable shapelessness. Think about that famous black and white image of faces or vases. You see two black profiles facing each other. Or, you see a single white vase in the center. Which is it meant to be? Because the one defines the other. Similarly, you can look at a cast shadow and immediately know the shape of the unseen object casting that shadow.

I'm not musical, but I'm told it's the pauses—the negative space, the void—between the notes that makes for magic.

So here we are, Jim and I, alone on our thirty-third Christmas together. We're deep in the remote mountains of Far West Texas with one string of tiny white lights on a tabletop Norfolk pine and a dinner plate-sized poinsettia that can only be described as "cute". Our families are away, celebrating in their own special ways. We did precious little shopping this year. Instead of the expensive gifts we usually give each other, we will hike the mountain, as far as Jim's new hips agree to go. I haven't even hunted up our Christmas CD's, so we listen, contentedly, to the cacophany of silence in this semi-wilderness we call home.
 

Last night, we joined friends for pizza baked in the ranch's horno oven, and as we shivered around the warm adobe oven, Roxa Robison marveled at how Mars looked like a necklace hung around the moon.  This morning, the non-English-speaking housekeeper for the ranch brought us a gift from Chihuahua, an act of unexected generosity that brought tears to my eyes and a self-conscious "Feliz Navidad" to Jim's non-Spanish-speaking lips. Tonight we'll attend candlelight communion service at the historic Fort Davis Presbyterian Church; I will read verse while Jim lights the Christ candle. Tomorrow we'll dine with close friends, and we'll call our distant and near families and tell them thanks for the generous gifts they sent. The week continues with a host of wine and cheese socials, lunches with friends, more ranch dinners. We're busy, but we're not harried. There is time to be still.

We are celebrating in the Void this year, feasting in negative space. It is warm space. Uncluttered space. Daddy isn't around to string lights, but his garish displays illuminate our hearts under these dark Davis Mountain skies as surely as when he'd march outside at dusk to plug in his nightly show. I doubt we'll drink eggnog because I forgot to buy extra eggs. But my great-grandmother's recipe is sweet on my tongue, the bourbon burning as it goes down my throat. Mother didn't send one of those fruitcakes baked with so much love, I ate them anyway, but I imagine her now, up to her elbows in brightly colored candied fruit. Which makes me think of those pickup truck, motorhome, limosine tours of Christmas lights, all of us, nieces, nephews, a dog and a parrot jammed into one vehicle, all joining my father in exclaiming ohh and ah at appropriate times. I do wish I still had one of the long Victorian dresses I sewed for my sister and I to prance around in on Christmas eve, or the old stocking Mother sewed with sequins when they probably didn't have money for felt. But at the time, some of those joyous and not so joyous Christmases had so many lines, such a tangle of shapes, so much noise, such confusion that the focal point went unnoticed.

We are alone this year, thankfully taking stock of our lives in a void far removed from the hustle and bustle, the glitter and bows. We are alone, yet all those who have loved us and whom we have loved are here with us, casting giant shadows that define who we are. And that is one great gift.
All the fear and frustrations, the hurt and the healing of the past year, all the remembrances of Christmases past compose the negative space shaping this ultimate fullness that Jim and I feel today.
Today, we give thanks. Today, we have Time. Love. Reverence. Hope.
For one brief moment, we pause between the notes of our lives to breathe at one with God.


(And now, I must make an asparagus casserole to take to Christmas dinner tomorrow. Likely I'm missing some ingredient, so I'll have to alter the sacred boardinghouse recipe one more time. Merry Christmas!)