rabbit season, christmas season

the day after thanksgiving, known as black friday, marks the onset where consumers everywhere are hell-bent on consuming everything they didn’t consume on thanksgiving, and on being consumed in the process. that’s the beginning of a season of no-holds-barred jingles and pretense in support of dollar business. it’s not just that day, it’s the whole season, the holiday season, fraught with jingles and pretense and razzle-dazzle and overstimulation and consumerism. even gurdjieff celebrated christmas with dazzlement, gifts, and certainly a good measure of materiality – but obviously there was also something meaningful, purposeful, and special in the atmosphere. that’s certainly not what i experience. i remember from last year’s christmas eve a muzak version of 'hallelujah' as i was buying toilet paper at the local fine fare supermarket. it is such a fake, i hate it – what’s redeeming about the holidays?

hmmm … redeeming about holidays …

maybe that’s it! there are holydays, of course, and there’s the winter season. but “holiday season” is as much as a merchandising contrivance as a “holiday sale.” like the lesbian activists say, "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." (the apt juxtaposition even leads me to wonder if perhaps nassr eddin had two mommies??)

any evolutionary christmas impulse cannot proceed mechanically, and instead becomes its opposite – such as gate crashing and pepper spray at walmart’s. or worse, perhaps some insidious force wants to prevent evolution, consider fa la-la la-la, la-la la la and how lamely fa (a note to follow the mi-fa first conscious shock) forfeits its advance, settling back to the do it started from, while maintaining the charade it is la – am i making that up?

in any case, an evolutionary octave must proceed against that!

doesn’t the christmas-jesus-being-born story have something to do with “redemption”? i’m in no position to address ramifications of jesus supposedly being born at all, let alone whether or not it was during this season. but, although fools rush in where angels fear to tread, i am interested in how this potential clash between an evolutionary octave and the ray of creation gets reconciled. et, alors, wiseacring.

from fritz peters:

it was my day on kitchen duty. … the kitchen boy’s first duties were to build the fires in the coke stoves, fill the coal scuttles, … on this particular day, the cook had not appeared by nine- thirty and i began to worry. i looked at the menu, and the recipe for the soup of the day, and since i had often seen the various cooks prepare the meal that was scheduled for that day, i made the necessary preliminary preparations. … when the cook had still not appeared by about ten o’clock 
i sent some child to find out what had happened to her and was told that she was sick and would not be able to come to the kitchen. i took my dilemma to gurdjieff, and he said that since i had already started the meal i might as well return to the kitchen and finish it. “you be cook today,” he said grandly.

i was very nervous about the responsibility, as well as rather proud of being entrusted with it. my greatest difficulty was in having to move the enormous soup kettles around the top of the large coal stove when i had to add coal to the fire, which was frequently necessary in order to keep the soup cooking. i worked hard all the morning and was reasonably proud of myself when i managed to finish the meal and 
deliver it, intact, to the serving table. the cook being absent, it was also necessary for me to serve it.

habitually, the students formed a line, each person with his soup plate, silver, etc., in his hands, and as they passed by the serving table the cook would serve them one piece of meat and a ladleful of soup. everything went well for a time. it was not until rachmilevitch appeared -- among the last to be served -- that my difficulties began. the soup pot was almost empty by the time he reached me and i had to tilt it in order to fill the ladle. when i served him -- it seemed to me that it was decreed by our mutual fates -- the ladle also brought up a fair-sized lump of coke. it was a thick soup and i did not see the coke until it was deposited, with a hard, clanking sound, in his soup plate.

judging by rachmilevitch’s reaction, his world came to an end at that instant. he started in on a tirade against me that i thought would never end. everything that all of the children had done to him during the past winter was brought up, hashed over in detail; and as he cursed and raged i stood helplessly behind the soup kettle, silent. the tirade came to an end with gurdjieff’s appearance. he did not usually appear at lunch -- he did not eat lunch -- and he explained his appearance by saying that we were making so much noise that he was unable to work.

… without saying anything 
to him, gurdjieff picked the lump of coke out of rachmilevitch’s soup plate, threw it on the ground, and asked for a plate of soup himself. he said that since there was a new cook today, he felt that it was his responsibility to taste his cooking. someone went for a soup plate for him, i served him what remained in the soup pot and he ate it, silently. when he had finished, he came over to me, congratulated me loudly, and said that the soup -- this particular soup -- was a favourite of his and was better than he had ever tasted.

he then turned to the assembled students and said that he had great experience and training in many things, and that in the course of his life he had learned a great deal about food, chemistry, and proper cooking, which included, of course, the taste of things. he said that while this particular soup was one that he had, personally, invented and which he liked very much, he now realized that it had always lacked one element to make it perfect. with a sort of obeisance in my direction, he praised me saying that i, by a fortunate accident, had found the perfect thing -- the one thing that this soup needed. carbon. he ended this speech by saying that he would instruct his secretary to change the recipe to include one piece of coke -- not to be eaten, but to be added for flavour only. he then invited rachmilevitch to have after-dinner coffee with him, and they left the dining area together.

coke adds life, indeed. carbon. what if carbon is added to the mix? immediately i associate to recognize that all that décor and cheap music and shopping and holiday motifs everywhere are not only decoration and flavors, to shop or not to shop, to indulge or resist, to approve or disapprove, but what if a reminding factor is introduced into the mix? all that spent trash and contrived sentiment to which i am conditioned to react one way or the other, though generally negatively, could instead remind me to try to remember myself – perhaps i'll find something nutritious in myself and/or in all those manifestations? suddenly suddenly i recall gurdjieff’s instruction to martin benson (and i think kathryn hulme and others but i don’t recall) that during they season they can go to the churches and “steal the prayers” of multitudes who’s prayers are otherwise spent, unable to reach “god,” but, thus, presumably, available as a food for people able to collect and assimilate it (i have no doubt such an indication to steal prayers is more esoteric than just a reminding factor).

isn’t the “christmas season” the clash of these octaves? how might they be reconciled?