Everyday we get a step closer to something amazing.  After lighting many cakes on fire, after trying every rendition of booze and sugar, we have struck caramelized gold.

The first of the 12 day celebration is starting out with a slow roll.  The lukewarm weather is the only gift wrapped present that we need today.  Cherishing the unique faces of friends and family and watching the developing personalities of babies is all the cheer needed to garnish this holiday.  I am following the example set up by that famous prophet that was born today, breaking bread and drinking wine with my closet companion, talking about hopes, dreams, harmonizing the positive notes for the new year’s composition.

The lazy researcher.  We are spoiled by the ease of the internet, that we expect to find the answer to anything and everything at the touch of our fingertips.  Ok so maybe you don’t need to go into the great stacks of the university library to find the answer to your question, but you have to admit that Yahoo answers and Wikipedia is limiting.  We need to keep pressing the internet which is a great organizer of ideas, a great collector of thoughts, an easy going host, by adding professional opinions, educated theories, revolutionary ideas.  Don’t get lazy, keeping making the oracle amazing.  It’s not just for entertainment, it can be a superhuman tool, but we all need to our party to make it great.  It is what you put into it.

Happy New everyone, today is the day that begins a new rotation of the sun around this great green and blue earth, a day that marks the first day where the sun starts to keep its shiny gaze upon us a wee longer each day.  The longest night is officially in the past, and although there is long winter ahead, the silver lining is that there will be more bright lights ahead, more golden rays that saturate the grey eyes, more invisible rainbow rays that penetrate into our monotone lives, spreading a warmth that is stronger than the hottest space heater, a warmth that embraces you tighter then that of a lost lover, a  warmth that causes the skin to glow like browning of bread in the oven.

This unassuming orange has a big surprise waiting behind each ordinary skin.  Every blood orange is different, each one unique with its tiger stripe pattern of ruby red, marmalade orange, sunset pink.  The outside glance will give you no hints about the surprise awaiting inside.  The package is wrapped like an everyday clementine, like a ordinary navel, maybe slightly blushing on the outside, but the jeweled inside is always different, always exciting, always new.

The silent mumble of the homeless is melodically lost in the jingle of Salvation Army’s charming bell.  If anyone is listening they would hear profanity that would make the devil blush crimson, they would hear lewd thoughts that are the epicenter of human destruction.  They would hear depravity of the darkest corners of the imaginative mind.  The mumble, you can hear it if you are so inclined to listen, you can hear it if you wink you tired ears open.  The soft shuffle and the monotone hum of the ignored man yields sharp verbs and colorful adjectives.  Sometimes there are sporadic shouts, but those are easy to forget like spilled milk.  The thing is that nobody is listening.  Everyone is plugged into the wonders of the portable phone, the jingle of endless distraction, the curiosity of Facebook, the promise of missing mindless updates.  Everyone is willfully blocking out the jargon of the addled mind, ignoring the mumble of the invisible person.