Small and Still

I offer you a second missive today from my days of stillness, first reported yesterday. I’ve just returned home from chilly Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I performed three shows at the terrific Bottle Rocket Social Club. Their menu consists of booze and hotdogs, but in the right circumstances, booze and hotdogs can provide a pretty good time.

I didn’t do much, which is to say, I didn’t do anything. I went from the airport to my hotel, from my hotel to the club, and from there, back to the hotel. I had some brief interactions with Uber drivers and a few people at the club but otherwise didn’t engage with anybody. Just stayed under covers, did my jokes, returned to the Land Below Covers. The woman who opened for me, a very good comedian named Amanda Averell, had a lot of suggestions for things I might do while in town. I told her she was wasting her time. I wasn’t going to do a goddamned thing. And I didn’t.

Somebody mentioned in the comments how the short, cold days contribute to general malaise, and I suppose that’s true. One wants to burrow in cold weather. One’s ear craves the muffled echo of sound bouncing from snowbanks. One wants food by the pound and gossipy firewood and gray, low-hanging skies that appear as if they might descend to the cold earth and disappear you within. Perhaps I am part bear. I am, after all, a lover of berries and naps. Might hibernation also be a recessive human gene?

The author, pictured above. Photo by Brianna Gaskill.

Somebody else suggested I undertake Transcendental Meditation™. I confess to a certain fascination with TM, having read about all the wonderful benefits it bestows on its practitioners. However, I remain wary of any meditative practice that: a.) Russell Brand follows and b.) is trademarked. In my opinion, spiritual practices rarely benefit from trademark protections and the people who engage with such practices certainly do not. Even so, I may take up the offer for no other reason that I understand every practitioner gets a personalized mantra, and if I cannot secure a family crest of arms, a personalized mantra sounds like the next best thing.

Tomorrow I am off to New York City for Comic Relief. My Have I Got News For You co-captain, Amber Ruffin, and I will be introducing our boss’s boss’s boss, the CEO of CNN, Sir Mark Thompson, who is set to receive an award for his efforts to fight hunger. I do not know Sir Mark* well at all, having met him a total of two times, but both times he was gregarious and seemed like the sort of fellow who would enjoy receiving an award. That’s not a knock – I think most people would enjoy receiving an award. I would not, but that’s because each award I won would only call to mind all the awards I didn’t win. Better to win none and consider my lack of awards a conspiracy.

Also on the bill are the Middle-Aged Dad Jam Band, the creative concoction of my friends Ken Marino and David Wain. It’s such a goofy, good-natured product. If you haven’t seen any of their work, check out their YouTube page here. I’m particularly fond of any Billy Joel performance they do. Perhaps it’s because Ken and Billy are both Long Island guys, but Marino nails both Billy Joel songs they’ve done. It’ll be good to hang out with those guys and listen to them shake their groove thang.

Following Monday’s event in NYC, I’m back in Savannah for the holidays. We (Martha) will almost certainly make several types of Christmas cookies. We (Martha) already purchased the tree, which is sitting in a bucket in our backyard. When our daughter gets home from college this week, we will decorate it all together, which is to say I will complain about untangling the lights, we will mourn whichever ornaments didn’t survive the past year, and then we will have a proper yuletide festooning. Although I do not generally care for Christmas and all the crap it entails, I am trying to be neither Scrooge nor Grinch. I will endure the season with a smile on my face because, despite my repeated attempts over the last 26 years of my marriage, bitching about Christmas does not seem to support the festive ambience everybody else craves. I have no idea why.

I apologize for this being more of a diary entry than anything else. I’m allowing myself to be small with my writing for the moment, because I feel rather small at the moment. In a good way. Like a mouse nesting in old newspaper. Small and still can be lovely. Small and still can be just the thing for when the sun sets before dinner is on the table. Small and still can also be just the thing when everything else is a din. There’s that girl, Rue, in The Hunger Games, whose survival strategy is little more than being small and still. Of course, she dies in the end. But let’s not let Rue’s unfortunate demise upset our momentary respite.

There will be fighting days ahead, no doubt. But not this second. At least not for me. I’m stretching out my stillness for as long as possible. Through the holidays, and into the New Year, and who the hell knows after that. But I am determined to take this quietude with me as we march towards whatever lies ahead. We can be passionately dispassionate. We can be quietly ferocious. We don’t have to amplify the loudest voices. And we don’t have to obey. Things sometimes seem impossible and hopeless until they are not. Enjoy the early darkness. Rest well. And when the light makes it impossible to stay in bed any longer, march into the day.

*Sir Mark does not ask to be referred to by his title, but he’s the first knight I’ve ever met and I’m going to call him “sir” because I find it vaguely funny.