Here I am all cozy with laptop in my lap, my Yorkie, Bella competing for my attention and sipping my steaming mug of coffee. It’s raining outside. Hard. I just heard a thunderclap so loud, it sounded like it was only yards away. So it’s a great prelude to busy, cozy holiday plans all centered around my only grand daughter, Arleen. Here’s the usual chain of events: Once the sun goes down, we play Christmas carols throughout the house and make cookies for Santa. Of course there are fake phone calls announcing Santa’s location, which neighbor he’s visiting, Santa spottings on the radio and all those things that drives kids crazy, making it impossible to fall asleep. Later, we tell her that Santa won’t come unless she does, so that’s another dilemma for the poor little girl. 

When we report that Santa has been seen by neighbors walking down our street, we all rush to the window making a big fuss and peer out the window to see him walking down the street with a heavy bag slung over his shoulder. (It’s usually a fight over who has to do it, and it’s always someone impossibly skinny.)

Santa comes that night, and she wakens to presents under the tree. Presents meant to spoil. As per a Norwegian tradition, she only gets to play with her stocking stuffers all day. It’s pure torture for her as she eyes the Christmas presents from time to time. Next to the plate of half-eaten cookies which, much to Arleen’s delight, has precious Santa spit all over them, She then sees a scroll and unfurls it to see that it’s a letter from Santa. It has the whole, “Me thinks ye hath been a good little girl… You get the drill,) and it ends off with his signature and a bunch of creepy alien letters. Santa’s secret native language.

At exactly 6:00 PM. we sit at the dinner table to eat. We’re all dressed up in reasonably dressy attire, and my husband dons his “bunad,” the traditional festive suit specific to the valley he’s from. It has a silver knife on the belt and all, which is pretty cool and comes in handy when opening up stubborn packages. Dinner is typical Norwegian Christmas fare consisting of pinnekjøtt (dried, cured sheep ribs. It’s an acquired taste,) rutabagas, and potatoes. After dinner, there’s more torture for Arleen. We yawn and stretch and announce that we’re all too tired to open presents yet and need a nap first, but not without feeding the sheep first. (We have no sheep in the suburbs.)

Finally, we get to the real business. Here’s how it goes down in Norway: One person takes a present from the tree and reads who it’s for. Another person takes it to the recipient who opens it. (Kind of like a fireman brigade) Everyone watches that person’s reaction before getting to the next present. Then it’s over. Wrapping paper all over the place probably obscuring tiny parts important for the toy it belongs to. We hug and give our thanks, then cleanup, then desert that everyone’s too full to eat.

I hope you have as delightful a Christmas as we will. Fortunately for those of you who celebrates on the 25th, we’ve warmed Santa up for you. Happy holidays, whatever they may be, to all of you. Now for Part Two of Erik’s take on Ecstasy.

Erik: You know, someone who’s able to journey a person. Just fucking think about it!

Jamie (laughing): His hand gestures are getting a little big right now! I told him he looks part Jewish right now. He cracked up.

Me: Or Italian, too.

Jamie: Italian, definitely. The arms, they’re up!

Erik: Think about it. In other cultures they actually harness the hallucinogens, and they have journeys. Native American Indians, all over South America—Ayahuasca—aborigines, all of these cultures have the common use of these drugs that helps them journey in their human life and helps them understand their human life better. But oh no, not the modern day humans.

What? These cultures aren’t modern?

Erik: “Oh no! Not the modern day humans! That’s negative; that’s bad.” That’s bullshit.

Me: Why is our country like that? Is it because we have such puritanical roots, or is it more than that?

Erik: It’s more than that. Going beyond control, it’s misunderstanding.

Me: Hmm.

(Pause)

Me: Is that it?

Jamie: No, he’s kind of talking about marketing.

That’s a pet peeve of his. I brace myself for the rant, but it never comes.

Me: Is it like Big Pharma trying to block it?

Erik: Bingo.

Me: I figured. What about opening up autistics? Would that help for that?

Erik: Marijuana does.

Me: Okay. But if ecstasy helps loosen boundaries—

Erik: Yeah, it can for autistic kids, especially—

Jamie (to Erik): Wait. What?

(Long pause)

Jamie: I have no idea. He’s talking about on the spectrum, he’s telling me they don’t even really use Asperger’s anymore. That’s gone.

Me: Yeah. It’s all a part of the autistic spectrum.

Jamie: Oh, I thought Asperger’s was on the autistic spectrum.

Me: It is. It’s just that there’s really a blur between the different disorders on the spectrum that they don’t define each one separately. They don’t stick with these labels as much.

Jamie: Oh, okay. He’s trying to teach me something, but apparently I’m not learning that well this morning!

Jamie giggles. 

Erik: Yes, it would help. It—

Me: Now what are we talking about, Ecstasy, LSD, all hallucinogens, what?

Erik: I would—and I’m sure people who have taken this will understand what I’m about to say—I would look at how the drug affects the human body, and then I would look at the personality and the illness that the person has, and I would match them up.

Me: Mm hm. And obviously this would have to be done in a safe, controlled psychiatric environment.

Erik: Oh, yeah! Can you imagine trippin’ with a psychiatrist?

Jamie laughs.

Me: They’d be entertained. You could sell tickets to these guys.

Erik: Yeah, it’d have to be someone who knows how to interpret your babble or knows what you’re going through and they can kind of quietly bring it up and not highlight it so much to where you go off the deep end. Or maybe the therapist knows that you’ve got to learn how to play like a child. Then, let’s say she gives you Ecstasy and she hands you finger paints and crayons and papers, and then here you have three hours of creating all this artwork. Imagine what it does for you, you know, in the latter half of your life as you look back at that moment and just say, “That was still my brain; that was still my body, and I had all that creativity in me, but I told myself that I shouldn’t use it because, it was too childish or that my child was injured inside of me, and now it can be let free.”

Me: How exactly does it work on a soul level?

Erik: Let’s bring the sixties back!

Jamie and I chuckle. I guess I cut him off before he was finished with his monologue.

Erik: How does it work on a soul level?

Me: Yeah. What does it do? Does it halfway disconnect it from the self, uh, that sort of thing.

Erik: It brings the soul closer to the physical body.

Me: Okay.

Jamie: Yeah, the way that he shows it to me is, um, Cling Wrap. You know that stuff?

Me: Yeah, mm hm.

Jamie: In the kitchen? You can lay it down on top of something but you get those bubbles in it? And you have to smooth out those bubbles if you want it to be completely air sealed.

I have that same trouble when I put on those stupid screen protectors on my cell phone. Protects the phone but not my patience.

Erik: So, the skin of our body is like the Cling Wrap for our soul. There are some air bubbles in there, but when you take a hallucinogen, it allows your soul to experience life without the skin, without the Cling Wrap.

Me: Okay.

Erik: All of the air bubbles disappear. Poof! The soul shines brighter than the Cling Wrap.

Me: Yeah

Hm. That might make an interesting t-shirt. Have a great weekend, peeps.

Here are some photos from a previous Christmas. In the last one, you can see that Erik still doesn’t miss this holiday. He’s a beam of light shining between Pappa and Kristina.

One quick note before we close: I’ll be off from tomorrow until the 2nd, so not posts until then. I encourage those of you who are new to the blog to start from the beginning of the archives and read away. There’s a lot of good stuff there.