DISPLACEMENT THEORY
Turkey on Christmas unless for an odd-duck-reason beef was on sale then from time-to-time The Christmas nutmeg cinnamon
and ginger would align as aromatic allies mingling with salivating meats and mints comfort benign. Children and parents alike
allowed child-like feelings at least for one day in the year, and if course then all pretend for some people. Yulan loved the food on
Christmas and was annually enjoying an odd coffee that he was allowed this one day of the year when his Jewish grandmother
would visit with various thermos containers and say every-time, “I think I more prefer coffee this morning.”
Oddly, though it were 500 in chorus voice, Yulan’s grandmother would always receive the reply, “Bon Noel!”
An old habit his parents explained to him at a young age, simply explaining he had no aunts, as though this seemed to remedy
any apparent confusion. Have you seen my name? His family’s small home, a place having been remodeled in years past;
originally built fit a large family thinking the same space adequate for two, now only fit one. Perfect for an only child and a double
sale to its previous owner. As a child, he would imagine he could just buy the one next door as an adult before a sad dwelling
vacancy brought the next assortment of individuals and couples moving in and out over they years until finally it became a lease
property, were only occasionally the mail went to the wrong house giving a clue as to who occupied the little sub-lot new only in
name as the new tax definition benefits was advertised time-to-time.
Christmas without his grandmother older than she let on and the noticeable absence of imitation flavors of the imaginary world
created in a mug; a peppery sweet cocoa coffee, what Christmas would taste like. The old way swept away. No more foreign, in
the modern world old customs still reined so that his family still held only little presents as his family’s custom; specialty meats,
vegetables, breads, chocolate, nuts, candies, ciders, pipe smoke and spirits. This year held no music as the advertisements hurt
everyone’s ears. Instead, only traditional games of cards and the odd assortment of game-boards collected over the years.
Yulan’s family always had just a sprig of pine, not a proper tree, a sawed off limb from the local park that the police annually
ignored his father’s petty theft and decorated with old ornaments passed down with little lights used year to year. Cinnamon
sprigs used as a mulch skirt would be picked up and promptly stuck in one’s mouth as quickly as one would enjoy a candy only to
be discarded later. Yulan and his parents never had holiday bad breath though his dad did tend to nip a few too many from the
brandy bottle, but silliness was all that was found and oddly his rare state seemed to delight his mother.
Go, and enjoy the season, as they say as though you were a mind reader. The passed down Nutcracker soldier forever
smiling with gloves like Santa Claus happily crunching every first bite saving one from the dentist with an ill-placed nut. No rocks
in the universal stocking the saying goes and tube socks warning everybody’s feet in place of embers.
The furnace wakes Yulan with its smell oddly placed in the middle of spring the air humid. His dream being opposite of the
waking season where his mind briefly found. He did his best to to appear awake looking alert and saw his dad smiling, “just
staring it to turn it off.” Nothing out of the ordinary, he would do this periodically throughout the year to run the motor or whatever
Christmas Spring Still Slightly Employed
one calls it. “Did I wake you?”
“No. Just day-dreaming while laying down. It’s Saturday what are you doing home?” Fear for just a moment filled him. He
was only competing local applications to jobs in the area, there simply are not enough vacancies, he didn’t want to move far away
from his parents. Where would he go?
“I am going to be employed just part-time for a while they are restructuring. The good news is they are investing but they think
that the shift might need a different man for the new Saturday crowd. So I’m only working half the end week. The good news is
no more restaurant Saturday morning meetings so the kitty allowance goes back into the pool. I did however put in for a different
position and I think that is promising.”
Yulan smiled, ” That’s good, you have been doing the same thing so long a little change will be great.”
“Yeah, change.” His father’s smile grim.
Yulan’s immediate thought was, never he did no harm not quite knowing where the sentiment came from but with the
understanding he already knew others had despite being so socially well-connected. He immediately thought about his dad’s
brother and regretted adhering to his uncle’s advice to never take any other job than the one he was getting a degree for, but his
his uncle dead in a four-way intersection that killed every driver involved; a mistake by the city leaving green lights on every corner
never changing on a remote rural road under dispute about a city boundary coincidentally a lawsuit could never be filed. He never
then thought about an abstract idea at the time, ’peasant insurance’ while abstract then, real now never having a beneficiary
except for his employer. He pushed the thought from his mind as he wondered how expensive his own father was being the
honest man. Paranoia is all he was worried and being paranoid.
“Another position was open and I asked for a transfer so to do some moving of positions is normal. I have many years
experience, far more than those who they have been hiring, my accounts are the most accurately exact. Not everyone can say
the same.”
Yulan knew how to repress the distaste for the side-line project generation that embraces dreams and lives off invisible
non-traceable profit. A society made plenty is always paid handsomely so long as they were on that ’one’ …whatever the hell that
meant, but always at the expense of his own family. What went wrong? Everything, he understood in an epiphany; whoever
paved the road last assigns the chumps to the next assigns middle-aged Americans into some nouveaux culture revolution
creating a predestined sorted career pool. If he ever tried to convince someone that theory he too could kiss any potential job
offer goodbye. An honest man is the least interesting in this modern world of business. Yulan’s slightly unstable thoughts
overwhelmed routine dismissal. He could not help but think to himself, for every optimist that is his family’s strength the next
controller of the financial universe ensures the addition of another adversarial well fed mean dog. Logically his own mind somber,
overwhelmed; there should exist an allied rabid dog as equally mean. Benefit from suffering is diligence in a constant equilibrium
of disproportionately distributed civility.