The best Christmas music is Johnny Cash. I'm not talking the stuff about celebrating an elderly phantom in red, honoring a tree stripped of life, or any manner of displaced Saturnalia indulgence.
Cash had demons and may or may not have exorcised through them by becoming a devout Christian, or finally walking the path he knew in his heart he had to find.
I am not a Christian, but appreciate the stories of sacrifice and good will to others. I believe humanity is flawed and no one is to ever be trusted. I'm capable of moments of pure joy, but there's a sadness in me that will never heal. I hope no one else ever has to feel what I feel on a daily basis.
Listening to Johnny Cash's version of Hurt is a powerful experience as a man at the end of his life sings a younger man's song and makes it his own from the vantage point of a person who knows he did serious damage, hurt people, hurt himself, hurt the sensibiliites of his God.
I dislike the holidays. Is it my fault that it's been 868 days since I've had a conversation with either of my two younger children? I will never have an answer. The salvation in front of me is my path and my path alone. The world shall see if in my works as I plan to devote the rest of my life to the public service I do. It will never be enough to satisfy the deep emptiness within me, but it's all I can do.
Now, I'm going to go back to work and will try to put a ten hour day in tomorrow. There is nothing else to do to quiet the chorus of anger but channel it toward something akin to the light, knowing full well that the only thing that will bring me peace is the darkness that awaits me at the end at the of this path.
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