It's Comin on Christmas their cutting down trees...

their putting up raindeer and singing songs of joy and peace, oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on, oh i wish I had a river so long I would teach my feet to fly, oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on."

As many of you know I worship Joni Mitchell for a multitude of reasons but that song in particular is a major one.

I don't have a river I can skate away on but I do have one I can float away on. It is the Mekon River. It is long, wide, brown and muddy but I can escape away on.

You see I have Christmas in my soul. I always have, since I could first form a memory. Don't get me wrong I had some rough holidays growing up. My father hated Christmas becasue it always reminded him oh how poor his family was and he and his brothers and sisters never had any presents. But my mother loved Christmas, she usually got her way and did her best to go all out. I will always love her for that. But it goes deeper than that. I never had to fight for holiday joy it was as if it summoned me. "Come on Jon, tis the season, Tis your job, go ahead catch the spirit then spread it around." I always felt that I was summoned by the holiday spirit,

I am the guy who had to play holiday music in July just to get a fix of the music I loved. My freinds and neighbors Jay & Tina can atest to that. I am the guy who for years made holiday mixes on cassettes then CD's when I became Jon 2010. I have fed the homeless, I would buy my homelss freind Viven 10 gifts for years and warp the hell out of them. My freind Andy and I would cook a five course meal for homelss youth. Their we were to Italian Queens going way over the top serving...smoked salmon tartlets to kids from Compton. I have done all the things that are what the true spirit of christams should be about.

Yet I haven't had that feeling for several years now. Even my trips to New York feel empty. The joy that I use to get from seeing the window designs on 5th Avenue that would delight me to no end no seem garish and unnessasary. I read that the Fifth Avenue stoors spend over 200 million dollars on their designs....really I mean really...it seems so wrong. I did some window design in New York on a very small scale and I know it is an art form I get that...I am just not getting Christrams.

As I write this from a tacky hotel in Hanoi or as I like to call it HanNoise, the looby I am in is playing some bizzaer verison of the holiday music I love so much. I will say the decorations are identical to America but then someone ponited out they are all made here in Vietnam.

So as I float/skate through this holiday in Indo-Asia I will not light a candle for my Mother at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, I shall light a candle at a Buddist temple. I will miss the joy of seeing Sophia, Will, Luca, Tallulah & Jaylyn catch the holiday spirit. Instead I will shop and try and find them something speical. I have yet to find a lot of good kids stuff but I have faith in Bali.
So maybe, just maybe, being away from the holiday I hold so dear & yet have lost its grasp, maybe just maybe, it will come back to me when it comes around next year.

And don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till its gone.

All is Calm, All is Bright,

Jon