I was 19 when the Berlin wall came down, and I was 31 when I had the opportunity to stand in front of what remains of it. Though there is little left of the original wall, it was a powerful moment for me. The front of the remaining section is now a gallery of sorts, each panel a different artists view. I took this photograph of the backside- the parts that few go around to see. The graffiti on the peeling surface is a different type of art. A little less pretty, and a little more raw. I remember watching the footage 2 decades ago, strangers side by side pulling down chunks of it, tearing it apart with bare hands. The faces of the older people who had lived with that wall cutting them in two is something that I will never forget. Each one of them wore a look of awe as though to say “It was wrong, it shouldn’t be here, but I never believed that I would see it crumble.”

There are so many daily atrocities in this world, so many times that human rights are trod on without regard, and it continues to happen. Day after day after day. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by it all, to get buried under the hate and the evil and the despair. That reason is also why it is so important to remember things like 20 years ago today the Berlin wall came down. Those pin pricks of light are what give us the hope that a wrong can be made right. A change can be made.

We are not very good at being a human race. We fuck it up on a horrifically regular basis. Not just small mistakes, enormous ones that tear at our moral fiber, that challenge the very right to life of some, and that show our ugly side in the things that we are willing to do to one another. Remembering the end of the Berlin Wall and the faces of those people as they watched it fall is the little pin prick of light that I need to remind me that it isn’t all dark. Mostly, but not all. Sometimes we get it right.

Do you ever feel like you’re smashing your head against one of these?

Maggi & Lucy wrapped up terrific Christmas presents for Steve and I and they sat in the spare room for 2 weeks in bright red Santa paper with blue bows and name tags. Yes, I am aware that there are a stunning array of things wrong with that sentence. Firstly, they were wrapped and labeled in OCTOBER and secondly, being that Maggi & Lucy are children of the canine variety, can you really see them heading out downtown with a latte and a credit card? Maggi would be all business, hating every second of it, tightly clutching her well hidden money belt and glaring at everyone with suspicion and just a little bit of fury. Lucy would alternate between outright terror and random moments of friendliness. Maggi would also probably be wearing some type of formal hat, gloves and a look of disgust.

I like to shop early and a little bit at a time so I’m not scrambling mentally or financially on December 24th. No one likes the big foam hand and the package of beef jerky from 7-11, even when it’s wrapped in a Maxim magazine.

Sorry, I digress. So there are these two big boxes in the spare room and I am dying to open them. Yes, I realize that I know what’s in them, but Steve doesn’t so I manage to hold out for 2 weeks before I finally have to convince him that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse will arrive on our doorstep if we don’t open them RIGHT FUCKING NOW!

I do not feel at all bad or regretful that they were opened now rather than on Christmas morning as I am not really all that precious about that holiday. I like Christmas, and I often put up a tree (albeit a tiny one that sits on top of my desk or credenza or whatever) but I don’t have any major connection to the 25th. I would be just as happy to put up the tree and wrap gifts in bright paper on April 23rd or September 17th. This of course is my mothers doing. I remember coming home on a rather unremarkable day in July only to find my brothers and I had new water beds that were apparently on sale. “Merry Christmas” she shouts as we walk into our rooms. If we were really short of cash, Christmas might come in January after all of the boxing day sales, or sometimes we’d push it back to spring. Whatever. When we were children, my brothers and I found a large gift in the basement. It might have been October or November, I don’t remember. We of course opened it immediately and spent the next several hour playing with the racetrack that we found inside. When my mother got home and found us sitting amid a pile of shredded wrapping paper and making loads of screeching and crashing noises with the cars she said something to the effect of “Do you like it?” Yes. Yes we did. The fact that it was October didn’t diminish that in the slightest. We were just getting a jump on things.

So, given that my traditional Christmas dinner often involved Chinese food or pizza as a kid, and society sanctioned and approved dates meant nothing to us, I felt no guilt what so ever in opening those presents from Maggi and Lucy last week. They were a pair of gorgeous winter boots for both Steve & I and seeing as they are the reason we trudge through endless snow drifts yelling “Go pee honey, go pee!” I figured They decided that they were lovely well thought gifts. Clever girls we have.

Christmas be damned, sometimes you just need a present, you know?