And keep the old
One is silver
and the other’s gold
As we climbed his steps, I ringing my jingle bells and caroling Rastaman Jacob Miller’s “We Wish You an Irie Christmas” (reggae being what I wife n’ I 1st bonded over in highschool; and this friend having a Jamaican father we also had that connexion) and then he came and let us in from the unendurable cold.
We walked up the stairs into a warm and cozy apartment with high ceilings and clean walls, upon one of which hung a poster of Cyrus the Great, at which I pointed.
“The true savior of Israel,” I spoke, perhaps blasphemously, and yet in earnest reverence. What happened next was quite unexpected—my friend produced, from a stack of papers on his desk, a thin folio of the sacred texts of Zarathustra (Zoroaster to the Greeks) which few know but are decisively influential upon Athenian philosophy, post-Exilic Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and which has been on my Christmas list for two decades during which I searched in vain for a decent translation on the internet: the Word of Ahura Mazda has been tested in fire; yet Ahriman tempts us all with deceitful criticism—then let me finish this Gospel of a review of the spirits of Christmas.
His house had such pure air—a diffuser was extending terpene-rich fragrance from essential oils of frankincense and myrrh! And yet when this wise man, this modern Balthazar, showed up fashionably late to another friend’s party a week later, during which I had been filling my stein from a 5 liter mini-keg of Hoffbrau, and I was about to drink a glass of Bourbon Barrel Stout my Irish stoner friend had poured me, and try his homemade magic brownies; at just that moment when the good luck Robin appeared, the Wise Man, having left the frankincense and myrrh at home, produced the Gold: Jose Cuervo, to be precise: I poured a shot into my stout and dipped the brownie in it and it was quite tasty! Then the party really started and you’ll have to wait until I publish my partially plagiarized drunken mishearing of another, writer friend’s work-in-progress he read to me in the bathroom while my friends were in the other room with my wife and kids playing Cranium and making far too much noise.
And in the hall outside decked with comfort and joy a threeway argument arose in perfect harmony of a Mozart opera but I think my friend was right all along when he had the last word there was only one truth:
“Sometimes two things can be true at the same time.”
“Not necessarily.”
Well! After that the kids left to get burritos and my wife and I followed. I bought a bottle of Modelo Negra with my burrito, to cap the evening, and walking home some guys were smoking in front of The Druid so I asked them,
“Does anybody have a light?”
And I drank the Modelo, and it was good.
All thanks to that one shot of tequila!
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