Lights at the end of day

Understand. I live in an urban area full of old multifamily homes and Hyundai sedans with duct tape on the upholstery.

This means that my small, northeastern city looks best at dusk. In the full black of night, it seems dangerous. In bright sunlight, it's too harshly lit, and the sunlight picks out every flattened cigarette butt in the gutter, every crack in the sidewalk.

But at dusk, the city loses a little of its dangerous edge and nearly all of its ugliness. It's gently blurred, like the face of someone you've just met in a dim bar after three bourbons. What I see in the dusk isn't what my city really looks like, and the face you see in that dim bar after three bourbons probably isn't truthful, either. Both misconceptions, both blurred visions, are good for you. People who see everything clearly all the time aren't happy.

I'd been to the gym that day. For still more context and atmosphere, my gym is located in a small strip shopping center along with a bar, a nail parlor, a liquor store, a dollar store, a check cashing business and a place that pays you to donate plasma. The gym sticks out like a soccer mom at a cock fight.

You get out of your car in the parking lot of that shopping center and your first thought is, "Where's the pawnshop?"

But I got out of my car, went inside and did the kind of minimally effective workout that makes old guys feel young as long as we don't look at any of the young guys.

And I drove home.

I stopped in my yard and started to "take down" what passes for my Christmas lights, which is a double strand of flashing multicolored lights. The strand of lights is just long enough that I can wind it once around the banister.

Taking down the lights takes the same 10 minutes as putting up the lights, but it was cold, and I was in gym clothes, so it seemed a lot longer.

And that was Christmas. Ended.

I love Christmas, so the annual light-removing ceremony makes me sad, but my wife, who is very practical and very compassionate, always reminds me that it'll be Christmas again this year. That's what my mother used to tell me when I was 7, and she was always right, so I believe my wife. She's been right so far.

I write a lot about politics. I have to, it's my job. I can't really cook, I don't know any DIY tips, I don't make horoscopes, and my relationship advice is crude and offensive and sometimes includes hand gestures.

I write about politics, but I don't live in politics. I live in the dusk, when you can't see too much, and you only have maybe 45 minutes before things get ugly again.

But even in the dusk, the bright little twinkling lights have to come down, and it's cold, and your favorite season is over, and all you have is a promise that it will come again.

Here. In America, the country that stuffed me full of canned spaghetti and free public education, and sent me out to make a living and a life.

And, for the first time, when I think or write about politics, America feels like the final Christmas as the dusk deepens into night.

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