Celebrate good times, come on!

Happy New Year! It's the Year of the Cock!

Or, if you prefer, "Rooster." Apparently "cock" is too strong a term to print on a placemat where little kids will abandon pieces of sweet and sour pork, but I say: get used to it, little kids. Life is tough, and euphemisms are for the weak.

Today is also Ash Wednesday, opening day of Lent, and as I learned this morning from Fox News, always accurate and pure, the Pope's health is failing, and spokepersons for the Vatican were unable to predict whether or not His Holiness would be able to "celebrate" Ash Wednesday.

I didn't grow up Catholic, but I've always thought of Lent as a time of atonement and self-denial quite separate from any kind of celebration.

I got a vision of the Pope in a party hat, swinging a noisemaker, calling out self-abasing statements to a piazza full of revelers, and it amused me, so I mentioned the celebration concept to Melvin at work today. As I should know by now, mentioning anything to Melvin is a mistake. The second the word "Pope" left my mouth, I opened the door to a curious mixture of resentment about the Inquisition and bitterness over the Church's vast funds and stolen artworks, tinged with a remnant of reverence totally at odds with his habit of referring to priests as "vampires." The lecture went on for a while, finally ending with a description of an opulent golden monstrans Melvin had once viewed at a museum, before his brain skipped a groove and holding up a finger, he announced, as if it were news, that Today Is Ash Wednesday!

With Melvin, sometimes you just have to wait a while until the tune comes back around on the guitar, but I jumped in for the chorus. "I know it's Ash Wednesday," I said, and repeated what I'd heard the Fox anchorwoman say about the Pope's celebration. Melvin stared at me, and interpreted the problem as one of religious ignorance.

"Well, there are many Catholics celebrating. If you look around today, you will see many people walking around with the mark of ashes on their foreheads." He pressed a finger between his eyebrows to indicate the location of the ashes.

"I KNOW that, Melvin, but that's not exactly a CELEBRATION, is it? That's more of an OBSERVANCE of Ash Wednesday. There's no one CELEBRATING their penitence." He was not on the train with me, and I had belabored the point, as I have here, long enough.

Sometimes, people unconsciously embody the traits that they consciously abhor--Melvin can work up a lather if the correct form is not submitted to him, with proper signatures, to requisition a pair of scissors, yet he loves the movie Brazil and understands the humor in the hopeless battle with bureaucracy that is the movie's central theme.

Outside of berating myself for beginning that conversation with Melvin, I did no penance today. I think I've banked enough penance to hold me through the year. Instead, I looked up my Chinese horoscope (I am a Fire Horse) (Rahhr!) and read the following:

The energy zipping through the airwaves in 2005 boosts your charisma and confidence to accomplish many things that you previously dreamed of but didn't dare do until now.

It also suggests that I should get a new wardrobe. I'll take that over penance any day! Ash Whose-day?



Star of the day. . .Terry Gilliam
posted @ 7:47 p.m. on February 09, 2005 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......