Some Shallow Post-Christmas Reflections

So . . . what did you all get for Christmas? And why, or why not? And why, as we age, do we want, more and more, for Santa Claus to be real? Are we so shallow that by being plied with gifts our loyalties could be so easily bought, hopes so easily aroused, neural pathways so deeply etched?

I got nothing.  We agreed.  I am left with no new camera, and no new guitar. My old guitar--and I'm down to one acoustic guitar now--which I purchased in 1972, is finally starting to warp.  After all these years of abuse, it is now slowly but surely becoming unplayable.

It's OK.  I am still very lucky.  Sure I am adrift in a world sans Santa after having spent my childhood a mere victim of exuberant post-war marketing, but I have my health. Didn't that used to piss you off when old people told you that? Little did we know, mainly because we had all those toys, perhaps.

I'll probably buy another guitar before too long. I'm too used to having one around. They never lie hidden in the case at my house. My Alvarez is hanging on a guitar stand so I can pick it up and play it any time I walk by if I want. I have been doing that for decades. My playing is surprisingly amateurish.

This is the season when we normally think about what happened during the past year, and maybe how to either make it stop, or how to keep it going in the coming year. Or even think of something new. It gets more difficult every time. So much has happened in 2019 that it seems like a ve-eeery long year, indeed, and a lot to consider.
I live in Kansas City now.  I got here at the end of July, about four and a half months ago. You might or might not remember I left Kansas City just about a year before. In between, I lived in Chico, and then Tucson. I don't judge, but I did decide that I wouldn't want to live permanently in either place. California in particular was very disappointing, but mainly only because I kept comparing it to my memory of it in the Fifties, Sixties and very early Seventies. A good lesson--things sometimes get worse, or perhaps I mean evolution does not necessarily equate with improvement. Tell that to the Neanderthals.
It sounds like I'm dissing California. Maybe I am, but let me explain. After living in what most Californians would call "the Midwest" since the 70s, I learned that regardless of what east and west coasters might think, all the stuff in between is what America is. For good or aught. Sure things are changing, and the coasts have their influence, just as any region does (more or less,) on the changing culture, but, like Texas, perhaps, they can do what they want but they shouldn't pretend they have the right to hijack the rest of the country.
I might add about here that I am a self-identified Liberal.  Just thinkin' out loud.
Anyway, I'll stop here. Might as well try to figure out if a moderate Democrat is the exact same thing as a moderate Republican, which, if you think about it, is exactly where the dialog should be--not way over to the left, or to the right, where the statistical outliers all stand and yell at the middle.
What I have really learned, I think, is that life isn't just where you live. What would I have written about this morning if I had never moved anywhere?

Hmmm

 "˙ǝןʎʇs ʇɐq" 'sǝןʞuɐ ʎɯ ɯoɹɟ buıbuɐɥ ǝןıɥʍ ʇsod boןq ǝɹıʇuǝ uɐ ǝʇɐǝɹɔ uɐɔ ı ɟı ʇno puıɟ oʇ ʇuǝɯıɹǝdxǝ uɐ ʎןǝɹǝɯ sı sıɥʇ