The Man With the Straw Heart

There once was a man with a straw heart who loved the people around him more then he could fathom and certainly more then he wanted to most of the time.

He saw their attachment to the material world, saw how they cared more for personal gain and trinkets then the people around them and although it filled him with fire, fire enough to burn his straw heart for only a moment at a time, and then he forgave them.

The man watched as love and friendship were tossed aside on arbitrary conditions of survival no longer needed, saw them cling to damp perverted animal skins like the caveman clung to the torch to scare away the night and sighed.

For him his love of the world was a mystery; to him the world was cold as ice, no one wanted to know him, no one could get close to the toxic strands that fell from his straw heart, weeping like a wound.

In reality this was only his love of all around him pushing the infection out, cleansing it and protecting the gift he had, which was the gift ever boy receives but a ‘man’ soon forgets.

Why I Am a ‘Grinch’ Come November

I hate Christmas.

Not because I hate the actual religious holiday itself, I have a great respect for the teachings of Jesus Christ and admire him as a prophet who favored love over hate and tried to teach the world lessons that stood the test of time till this very day.

Not entirely because of my version of the ‘holidays’ either, which since about 1988 or so, consisted of either working every holiday only to seethe with jealousy serving people who got to go home to family and friends while I got to go home to an empty space or sitting alone in said empty space nine times out of ten.

Those feelings might have indeed escalated my disdain for the day, it is never easy to be on an island when everyone else is on the main land, laughing and cheering and receiving kinship.

It is because in today’s world we have taken the date of the birth of a great prophet and turned it into a marketing ploy. Granted they have stuffed the free concept of love in six dollar ‘Hallmark’ cards on Valentine’s Day (which guys you better buy something or pay for it later-brilliant marketing I give you that) and turned almost every other major Western holiday into a candy makers wet dream, but for Christmas they turn the dials up to eleven.